Obscure and Resigned Self
by Hiss13
Summary: The world truly never stops turning. As Touma, freshly released from the hospital after traversing Denmark, begins his apology tour, he is pulled back and runs head first into the darkness of Academy City to face off against the aftereffects of its sins in order to save a girl without the strength to cry for help.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Resentful Prisoners of Their Own Devices.

 _Surfacing_Error._

* * *

"Tch. Does the city never fucking learn?" An annoyed albino boy with a can of coffee in his hand stared at a parked truck he had come across as he was trying to enjoy some time for himself away from all distractions. This boy was Academy City's fearsome and supposedly untouchable Number 1, Accelerator.

He had only just escaped being dragged around by the brat and Worst in what can only be described as one of their regular spats. Being around them for enough time let him predict when trying to sleep on Yomikawa's couch was not going to be enough to give him peace. They were both immature brats, after all, even if they were polar opposites in nearly every other aspect. As such, the art of slipping out completely unnoticed was something he had learned to master.

With the weather slowly encroaching onto the border between winter and autumn, the city fell into a tranquil lull as less people stayed outside and opted to spend more time indoors. Though, that never really stopped children from frolicking around outside. But, children passing by him sporadically were far less of an irritant compared to children bickering in the next room over.

Unfortunately, the lull of silently walking around the district with a can of coffee in hand needed to be ground to a halt.

"What a stench." Accelerator muttered as he stared at the vehicle that only seemed to feel out of place to him. In contrast to his words, he simply approached the truck from behind while finishing the last portion of his coffee.

With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the now empty can towards a nearby drum-shaped cleaning robot which subsequently stopped to let it land before taking it in.

"Now, then." With a hand on the latch on the container door, he muttered. "Let's see what this thing is hiding." His hand quickly flicked open the latch and pushed up the container door, causing it to roll up. With the help of his cane and a step built onto the truck below the container, Accelerator climbed up into it. As soon as he took a few steps into the truck, the door immediately unrolled itself and shut.

Before his eyes could acclimate to the darkness, numerous lights turned on within the container. Accelerator placed one hand on his choker's switch while letting his gaze dart around all over what was around him.

Numerous tower-like devices with flashing LEDs lined the walls as three screens, one on each wall, displayed various forms of raw data that were constantly scrolling down. Based on what he was seeing, the truck seemed to be a mobile sensor station, though what it was sensing was a complete unknown. The values of the raw data on the tables didn't seem to reflect any physical quantity that came to mind.

"My, my." From a speaker embedded in the monitor furthest from the door, a voice so electronically altered that Accelerator couldn't even glean the sex of the speaker reverberated. "Of all people to find this place, the Number 1 was not the one I expected. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

"If you must know, I couldn't stand your stench." Accelerator gave a frank reply. "What do you think shits like you are doing?"

"I see. Someone embroiled as you in the city's darkness can't stand its stench?" The voice began to chuckle. "How ironic."

"I swear, it's like Academy City can't keep to its word. I thought what I did at the end of the War was enough to stop it all, but shits like you just keep budding in over and over again."

"Oh, what you did _had_ stopped it all. You had given those who had been chained to the city's filthy underbelly their chance to escape. You unlocked their chains and showed them the door to the light. You may not realize given your own deep-set ways, but you're a hero of sorts to many of us. You attained what so many of us couldn't and gave it all to us without a second thought." There was not a hint of condescension or malice directed towards Accelerator. Every single word the voice had spoken was honest. "For that, we all thank you."

Of course, despite the honesty, Accelerator didn't even have to ask why the voice was still mired in the world it had desired to escape or why this data collection facility even existed. Gratitude may have overwhelmed the voice's tone, but it was still coming from this vehicle that so obviously did not belong.

"But, I'm sure you experienced it with the Freshmen. I'm sure you experienced it during Agitate Halation. That world hidden in the city's shadows continues to exist. After all, humans aren't such simple things that they'll grasp the light the moment they get the chance to. There are some like Kuroyoru Umidori who only knew those familiar chains." It was not like she was the only one either. Otherwise cases like her or Mitsuari Ayu would have never existed. "There are some whose lives thrive in that shadow like a fungus like Yakumi Hisako and the Kiharas." But, the voice seemed to only talk about those entities as if they were all separate from it.

"And there are those who bear resentment so great that they have to turn back into the world they hate to crush it. I'm sure you've seen something to a similar effect before." The voice had finally erased its gratitude and began to seethe pure malice, as if it were a source of miasma.

"Tch." Accelerator clicked his tongue. Resentment left without proper cathartic closure was what lead to the formation and movement of the terrorist network known as GREMLIN as far as he knew. In the end, it was not unexpected for such a presence to exist in the city. "So you're just another piece of shit that wants to traipse about."

"That's cold, though I can't call that inaccurate as much as that pains me." The voice paused for a brief moment. "In the end, I just wish to make one request to you. Please stay out of our way."

"Heh. Who do you think you are to make that request to me?" With his free hand, he poked at his temple with his most slasher-like smile. In the end, the path of violence was truly difficult to divert himself from. "I'll crush you bastards. That's how this will go down in the end."

"I see. You wouldn't have gone as far as you did if you didn't have that attitude." Despite the malice in the voice, there was neither a hint of disappointment or hatred. If anything, one could detect what possibly seemed like admiration.

"But, I shall answer one question. Who are we, you ask?"

The screens on the walls and the LEDs on the various towers simultaneously shut down before lighting up again. But what remained on the screen was no longer an incomprehensible set of data charts constantly in update. They were all an identical countdown in large font dropping from ten.

"We are Academy City's Error."

The voice went silent as the obvious hang-up sound followed its silence.

Like clockwork, an explosion followed as the entire truck was engulfed in flames and everything inside was mercilessly torn apart.

Yet, despite that indiscriminate destruction, the boy in white had stood unscathed and unfazed with his cane retracted. "What a fucking pain."

* * *

 **A/N: The story of this project's birth is strange to say the least. It was originally meant to be a one-shot consisting of most of next chapter and a different chain of events following that, but it ended up in development hell for...a long time to say the least. But, after a bit of a brainstorm while waiting in anticipation for NT20, I ended up coming with a new idea for a full crazy long-term fic and ended up starting to write it instead.**

 **I hope you enjoy Touma's and Accelerator's crazy ride that will start from here on out.**


	2. Chapter 01

**Chapter 01**

The Tree Sprouts At the Border.

 _Beyond_The_Circumference._

 **1**

The late-November chill raced about Kamijou Touma's body as he walked down the street. Unlike normal situations, he did not have the jacket for his school uniform on. He was simply dressed in his normal windbreaker, pants and sneakers. After all, the one he had used on that day had been thrown around and damaged so many times in one day that it was a wonder why he was still using it.

It was not like he could switch out of that outfit though. He had just been discharged from the hospital after recovering from injuries mostly caused by Silvia and Othinus. He was thankful that someone in the hospital had taken care to switch his outfit.

Even though he had been in the hospital, he ended up finding a way to placate Index at home with a method involving Maika, some leftover soumen, and huge containers. The details were not necessary since such a method would likely not work a second time.

Since his method would not succeed again, Kamijou figured that it was a good idea to head to the supermarket to pick up some ingredients so he could cook for Index and Othinus. He made sure to check that his wallet was in place before heading to the door.

However, fate conspired to keep him from entering the supermarket. "Hey, is that Kamijou Touma I see?"

Kamijou turned his head around to see the face of a familiar girl in a flashy maid outfit a few meters away making her way to him. "Yeah! It is you!"

"You're…Kumokawa Maria, right?" He said while trying to recall her.

"You sound unsure."

"Well, to be fair, we haven't talked much." Kamijou said, scratching his head. "In the end, I really don't know much about you beyond the fact that you're a maid-in-training like Maika and that you're _that beauty-senpai's_ younger sister despite the fact that we're friends…"

"Being known only for who I'm connected to and not who I am…" Maria muttered. "I can feel my pride taking blows."

"…That and I'm more focused on the fact that Index is going to be clamoring for food now that I got discharged from the hospital." Kamijou said, ignoring the maid's utterance.

"Ah, that's right. You got heavily injured from that incident where you were running around Denmark after we split off." Maria said dropping her gaze a bit.

"Hmm…" Kamijou pondered for a bit before he realized why Maria was averting her gaze. "Are you still hung up about what happened to Kiha-"

Kamijou silenced himself at the sudden sensation of the maid placing her index finger on his lips. "There are certain things I would rather not talk about in public with others." She said.

Kamijou nodded, allowing Maria to take her finger off his lips. He was about to speak up but he was unsure what to say.

"If it's alright with you, do you mind if we go to that restaurant nearby?" She pointed to a family restaurant across the street.

"Are you really sure talking in a family restaurant is fine with you?" Kamijou Touma was a bit suspicious. After all, the girl was not willing to talk outside. What made a family restaurant any different?

"If you're worrying about the privacy, don't." She reassured him. "That chain has a method involving specialized invisible walls behind the seats that prevent sound from escaping outside. It allows for quite a bit of privacy."

"Huh…"

"Oh, and if you're worried about the cost, I'll foot the bill." Maria lifted her hand and placed it on her modest chest with a wave of pride exuding from her. "Contrary to the beliefs of certain people, maids aren't impoverished."

* * *

 **2**

The November chill was indiscriminate. Anyone normal who walked down the streets of Academy City could feel the uncomfortable chill that signaled the arrival of Winter.

Yet, there was one girl who skipped down the street normally, as if she was unaware of the weather around her. What was more enigmatic about her was how unfit for the weather her apparel was. The girl had her black hair tied up in two buns and wore a pink sweater, a mini-skirt, torn black stockings, and an asymmetrical setting of boots where the left boot reached half-way up her thigh as it was designed and the right boot had the upper portion above the laces folded down.

Despite all of that, the most off thing about this girl were the devices hanging down from her neck: a smart-phone, a small 1seg TV, and a miscellaneous touch-screen device.

The devices made infinitesimal sounds as they softly collided while moving up and down with each of the girl's skips. It was as if her movements were made such that she would intentionally make only an iota of sound as she walked.

In the end, despite how out of place the girl normally seemed, the many busy people around did not seem to take notice of her beyond a quick glance. Despite her odd choice of attire, she looked and seemed to act like a normal enough girl.

This girl named Kihara Enshuu skipped down the street while humming a simple tune. As she continued to skip down the road, something caught her eye. A fairly familiar combination of black and yellow entered her peripheral vision on the other side of the street.

It caught her attention enough that she had turned around to get a better look at the sight without even thinking. Sure enough, that sight was exactly what she had thought it was.

But, she was unsure what to do. She started to fiddle with the various devices around her neck so she could use someone else's thought patterns to figure out what to do. However, she soon stopped.

The girl who had lacked a certain 'Kihara-ness' stopped herself and let the devices hang again without giving them a second glance.

It was time for the individual named Kihara Enshuu to make her own decisions on how to act.

* * *

 **3**

"I know I was not there the whole time but I still want to know what was going on." Maria spoke. The tea in her cup rippled as she put it down back on the small plate on the table. "After sensei and I split off from your group, it seems like so much happened. The next thing I knew, you were protecting the person you went to stop."

Kamijou looked at his tea for a bit before looking back at Maria. "I guess you could say a lot happened after I reached Sargasso." He sighed. "After fighting a battle that lasted for what seemed like eternity, she and I came to a mutual understanding and she no longer had any desire to destroy the world. I couldn't just stand by and watch as the world tried to slaughter one girl and accept that as justice with a smile."

"Hmm…"

"I know it sounds a bit incredible, but-"

"It's fine. I came to you with full intention to hear you out. After everything that I've seen—well, at the very least, I don't think you'd try and mess around with me...

"Ah, I guess you probably still hold some sort of grudge against her because of what happened to—"

"No! That's not it." Maria interrupted him again. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't have any lingering resentment towards her. But, sensei acted in his own selfishness." She paused. "No. Despite the fact that he was being selfish, I fully accepted him. Perhaps he and I were both complete fools, but I chose to accept his foolish selfishness to the end…

"That girl, Othinus, scared me to no end. It was a level of fear which I could not find a way to repress or comprehend. I even watched as she took sensei away. But even then, sensei was still able to follow through with his own selfish actions." Maria found herself unconsciously smiling, swishing the glass of soft drink in her hand as she spoke. "I would be turning my back on him and denying his actions if I continued to hold a grudge against her."

 _The malice towards Othinus really has subsided._ Kamijou thought, with a sense of relief, as he listened to the girl. But even so, there was something he needed to bring up. After all, he had committed a sin to Maria and Kihara Kagun as well. "There is something I have to admit, myself."

"Hmmm?" Maria gave a quizzical look to the boy whose expression had grown solemn.

"During the fight with Othinus, the world was rewritten multiple times. After rewriting the world for what was probably a billion times in order to break me, she eventually decided that the best way to do that was to create a completely happy world, one where everyone was saved from their burdens. As long as I was alive, that world would eventually crumble. If I gave up on everything including my own life, that world would never have been destroyed on its own." He clenched both of his hands together while trembling. In the end, he never escaped from that infinite hell unharmed. While he did come to terms with his own selfish actions and accepted who he was, the scars inflicted on the boy's psyche would likely never subside. "Of course, that meant that Kihara Kagun was also alive and…" Kamijou stopped speaking at this point. He wanted to force out the words but it seemed he could not.

"Was he happy?" Maria grabbed at her maid uniform by her chest. Despite it all sounding like the ramblings of a crazy person, despite what seemed to be the broken shell of a man that seemed to be before her, and despite the truncation of his words, she took in everything he wished to convey. All she could do was allow him to finish while taking in the scene of what could have been.

"He was." Like a child feeling guilt over committing a taboo, he regurgitated all that she would prod him for without hesitation.

"I see." Yet despite her own willingness to take it all in, she could do naught but utter simple phrases. "Was I..."

Despite her incomplete words, he nodded. There was no need for her to finish expressing her thoughts. She placed her drink back down and clasped her hands together. "What happened to this world?"

"I rejected it." He spoke bluntly. "It was a selfish action. But even so, I wanted to return…" No matter what, it seemed that Kamijou was unable to convey everything.

"…and you wanted to tell me about what you did?"

"…Yeah…Despite the fact that I came to terms with what I did, I still have to apologize, especially to everyone involved. To everyone whose happiness I shattered. I'm sorry."

Of course, Maria could feel the weight of those words. There was something more to it that she could never understand. But, the weight of it all was still palpable. But, after letting it all settle, the girl smirked. Her answer was simple. Perhaps, it was something that was obvious for someone like her who could not fully comprehend the reality he had faced.

Unfortunately for her, however, her answer would have to be pushed off to later as a very loud knocking sound came from the window next to the table. The two immediately turned their heads to look at the window to see a little girl knocking rhythmically on the window.

"GAH!?" Maria shouted a bit at the sight of the girl named Kihara Enshuu knocking on the window. "What the hell is she doing here?!"

"Do you know this girl?" Touma asked, scratching his head in confusion.

"Know her? This girl was one of the Kiharas sent to Baggage City!"

"Eh?" Kamijou had many questions pop up but something off seemed to stop him from asking those questions. The sound of the knocking had stopped. As he looked to the side, he noticed that Kihara Enshuu had backed away a bit. "Don't tell me…"

"…she's going to break through the wall…" Maria said, finishing Kamijou's sentence.

"I'm going to go bring her in. You stop her from breaking through the window!" Kamijou said as he hastily got out of his seat and ran to the entrance.

Maria, without responding, immediately attempted as many hand signals as she could to try and stop the girl.

* * *

 **4**

Kihara Enshuu sipped through the straw on her root beer float with an expression of pure glee on her face as she sat next to Kamijou Touma. To anyone else, it would have just been a normal scene of a little girl enjoying a sweet drink. To Maria, there was a huge level of dissonance between the girl in front of her and her action.

"I'm going to need a nice long bath after all of this is done," muttered Maria under her breath while pressing her fingers against her forehead. She could see Kamijou Touma sitting across from her doing the same.

In the end, the mood was ruined for both of them. The existence of Kihara Enshuu seemed to wipe everything that they had built up here away with a sense of complete awkwardness.

"Is something wrong, Touma-oniichan? Maria-oneechan?"

"Oniichan...?"

"She tends to call everyone slightly older than her oniichan or oneechan."

"Are you okay, Touma-oniichan?"

Touma paused to look at the girl before placing his palms onto his forehead. "I…just need to comprehend this." Despite being called those forbidden words by a little sister-like character, there was something about her that made all of this

The two teenagers finally took deep sighs before asking the most important question. "What are you doing here?"

The young girl cut her sipping off midway as turned to face the Maria and Touma while still keeping the straw in her mouth. For a few moments, there was radio silence before the girl finally let her lips off the straw. "I..." The girl started to speak but her voice trailed off as if her thought remained incomplete. She grabbed at one of the many devices on strapped around her neck and stared at the screen. "Yes, Konshou-onee-chan. I just came to bother you. I think."

Kamijou Touma had seen many things in his life. He had also seen many things in his billions of deaths. Even so, there were some things he could never be prepared for. The strange girl called Kihara Enshuu was one of them. "Is this normal for her, Kumokawa?"

"I…think so. She was somewhat like this in Baggage City." On the other hand, Maria sat in a purely defensive stance as she stared at the monster who had done a number on the many people who were in Baggage City. "Though I remember her more as a crazed Kihara surrounded by the stench of blood. After the three of us incapacitated her, it's hard to say that I'm comfortable being around her."

In the end, that was the dissonance that Maria could not escape. Even if it was something Kamijou had no context to, he could completely understand the sentiment.

"Yes, Nayuta-chan. I'll tell them." The girl finally let go of the portable TV she had been holding until then before looking at the two. "I really just wanted to join you. That's what I decided."

Maria found herself clenching her fist and recoiling slightly in reflex at those words.

"It's not like she can do anything at in such a public place anyway, right?"

Kamijou's acquiescence did not come as a shock to Maria. He had not seen the true extent to how dangerous she was. Knowing Enshuu, she probably could pull ridiculous feats in a public location while everyone around would be none the wise. That's the kind of skill she held as a Kihara.

Despite all of that, she could still only speak out the words, "I guess not."

Regardless of Maria's own will, Enshuu would probably stay by their side or make that happen. In the end, she let herself be resigned to that as the young girl once again began to sip up her drink again.

* * *

 **5**

Of course, things only took a more bizarre turn from there on.

"Sorry about keeping you along with me." Kamijou Touma took a quick glance at the maid who was still accompanying him to apologize before turning back to the packaged meat and their prices. "Which one would be able to placate Index best…?"

"It's fine. Besides, I'm pretty sure your new shoulder companion would have tried to prevent me if I tried to leave. Oh, how about this one?" Maria on the other hand, never turned back to Kamijou as she pointed to one of the packed chicken breasts.

"Yuiitsu-obaa-san says that you could make some good Chicken and Cauliflower curry with that," Enshuu said from her position in between the two. Despite her small hands, she held a tight grip on her new onii-chan and onee-chan.

"No. Cauliflower's versatile but it tends to be too expensive for a single head." Touma frowned at the fact that such a generally useful vegetable was too expensive to buy. He was unfortunately on a tight budget. "I need to make as much food as possible for as little as possible." Such was the reality of the impoverished househusband with a hungry, growing child.

"You could always try serving chicken with some fried rice. That should be pretty inexpensive overall."

Given Maria's suggestion, Touma went over a few numbers. It wouldn't be too expensive and the only downside was Index possibly getting impatient (though that would have been a given regardless of what he went with).

"Chicken with fried rice it is, then. I could get a few vegetables cheap and it would make a nice, filling—"

"Kami-yan, you bastard!"

"How could you, nyah?!"

Kamijou turned his head to hear two familiar voices coming from further down the aisle—a blonde boy in sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt and a blue-haired boy with piercings. Together with Kamijou, they made up the infamous group of idiots known far and wide (in the realm of his school) as the Delta Force.

From the other side, Kumokawa and Enshuu both poked their heads out with mild surprise (or as close to surprise as Enshuu could muster).

"First that nun, then that half-naked eyepatch girl in Denmark, and now a maid and loli character?!" The blue-haired boy began to go on a rant while Tsuchimikado nodded along with him.

"Really? Is now really the best time for this, Aogami? Tsuchimikado? Poor Kamijou-san here still has the maw of death awaiting from one angle already. He doesn't need another." Kamijou, despite his words, almost seemed resigned to his fate as he passed the grocery basket he was holding to Enshuu.

"You have to share the love, nyah!" Tsuchimikado finally took the time to chime in. "You can't just keep leaving us out of your escapades."  
"The moe capital must be redistributed. That is your punishment!" The world's second greatest degenerate began to pant with excitement.

Yet, despite all of the widespread degeneracy the two were exuding, Kumokawa Maria spoke with zero reservations while putting herself in the forefront. "Ah. So you're Tsuchimikado's older brother."

"Hmm?" With the sudden mention of Maika, the siscon sergeant diverted his attention to the young maid-in-training. "And you're…?"

"Kumokawa Maria. I'm from the same school as her so she's a friend of mine." With a curtsy fitting of a maid, she closed off her quick introduction.

"Kumokawa, huh. Maika has told me a lot about you." Maria quickly raised a finger and started to open her mouth, ready to ask a question. "Before you ask she spoke highly of you...for the most part."

Somewhere in the background, a young blue-haired man began to stare intently at the interactions between the man who he thought to be his brother-in-arms and a cute maid girl with ringlet curls. The imminent fuming was being subsequently dampened by the man who he thought to be his adversary as he received a few sympathetic pats on the back.

"So, what does she say about me?" The blond onmyouji began to scratch at the back of his head as a big grin appeared on his face. The entirety of the atmosphere around him seemed to be not phasing him in the slightest as the two other boys emitted the worst of vibes and the younger girl seemed to be just staring at it with the most morbid of curiosities. "Nyah, how embarrassing."

As Tsuchimikado spoke with the mannerisms of an embarrassed maiden, Kumokawa lost her capability to hold back. Any form of maid-like neutrality and serenity dropped as a single unquestionable emotion wrested control of her facial muscles. "Oh god, it goes both ways. The things she has said are too much for virgin ears."

Disgust. Whatever incestuous passions were blooming in Maika were mutual. Even if she would judge Maika no less off for it, the knowledge was not pleasant. There were certain things people were probably better off being ignorant of to the bitter end. This was absolutely one of them.

"YOU TRAITOR!" A single shout turned heads of all involved back towards Aogami. "I trusted you and you ended up siccing me against a friend while hiding maids behind my back."

"You don't need to act like a spy your whole life you damn nyah nyah onmyouji!" Once an enemy, the spiky-haired boy stood by his blue-haired companion's side, arms crossed and with a glare that signified he was ready to do battle.

No further words were needed as Tsuchimikado reciprocated everything. Their arms simply unraveled as they all formed fists and glared to each other. Without a word or a signal, the three charged at each other and a brawl erupted in that meat aisle in the supermarket.

As Kumokawa Maria and Kihara Enshuu took a few steps back, the shorter girl turned to the maid and asked a question. "Maria-oneechan. You planned this, didn't you?"

"My, whatever gave you that idea?" The ringlet girl put her hand above her mouth and chuckled a bit before Enshuu displayed a screen with the maid's name on it. "You really are quite a humorless one, you know?"

Enshuu fumbled around with the portable TV as she took in the words that had been casually dropped on her. Even if they were something Maria could casually say, they tugged at something that Enshuu could not define. Whether it was her fractured sense of self or the small concept people detailed as emotions did not matter. She could not speak in detail of this strange sensation.

Noticing those slight twitches, Maria could not very well ignore what was going on with that girl. She bent her legs and let her knee touch the ground, looking up into Enshuu's eyes and grabbing her shoulders. "Is something wrong?"

Enshuu looked back to the three way brawl that was going on and pointed to it. "Humor?"

"Well, I guess so." Maria spoke in a matter-of-fact manner as she attempted to force out what Enshuu seemed to be keeping repressed.

Enshuu continued to stare at the mess before her for just a bit longer before letting go of the portable TV and putting her hands around the straps that kept them dangling around her neck.

Reading into what Enshuu was doing, Maria asked one simple question. "Is that what you want to do?"

The girl was one who never attained the qualifications to call herself a Kihara. She constantly used the thought patterns of others to make her decisions for her. Whether she liked it or not, her self had long since been rubbed out. The girl called Kihara Enshuu had long since been suppressed by the noise that was her crutch. So, for her, the answer was clear. She removed the straps from around her neck and handed them all to Maria.

Without looking back, she gave a jump start and dived into the brawl before her with a great 'TORYAAAAAAAH!"

* * *

 **5**

Kamijou Touma was aching all over. The term overwhelming defeat did not begin to describe what, Champion over the Delta Force and competition to the Iron Wall Girl's ever-tenuous position, Kihara Enshuu had achieved.

Of course, the situation of a young girl standing above three teenage boys who were kissing the ground shortly after what obviously was a brawl attracted the ire of the supermarket's manager leading to all five of them being promptly kicked out, much to Touma's dismay. The two boys with unnatural hair colors silently accepted their utter defeat (for now) as they trotted off to God knows where.

"So much for groceries from there…"

After having his first source of groceries taken out of the running and his body thrown around both by a little girl with skills far to dangerous for her age and an angry manager, he needed to recuperate sitting on a bench at a nearby park. His eyes focused on the cloudy, gray sky above him as he waited for the soreness to finally subside.

"Well, there are always other grocery stores. It's not like it's the worst loss." Cold metal touched Kamijou's cheek, forcing him to lift his head up and look at the maid who was offering him a can of...peach soda? That was probably one of the better choices from the vending machines.

"Well, it was probably never meant to be at that point." Resigning himself to the reality that his hopes were doomed from the moment the other two boys saw him, he took the soda he was being offered and opened the pull tab.

The two shared a moment of silence as they started sipping down their respective drinks while gazing at the playground the bench they were on was a part of.

"Hey, about the stuff we were talking about in the cafe..." Maria took the opportunity to break the silence and bring back what she had wanted to say, especially since she didn't have to worry too much about Enshuu overhearing at this point. "What about her?" Maria pointed over to Enshuu who seemed to be dazzling numerous kids who had seemed to be grouped around her deft performance on the jungle gym. It seemed like they were all trying to catch her to no avail, earning the respect and adoration of the young ones. "I mean in the happy world. What happened to her?"

Kamijou stared off at the young Kihara, trying to scrounge through his memory for any hints of the girl, but his memory failed him. It was likely that he had seen her at some point in that phase, but that he simply failed to register her. It was not completely unreasonable for that to be the end result. "I don't know. I probably saw her but never recognized her since I never met her before today." He spoke, clutching at the can in his hands.

Maria paused, taking a moment to register what she had heard before regaining her mental bearings. "Well, that's fine." With a single deep breath, she spoke with brimming confidence. "It may be presumptuous of me to say this, but you didn't commit any sins against us. That isn't to say what you did wasn't selfish or wrong, though."

Kamijou remained silent, simply turning his gaze towards the maid's clear eyes.

"If anything, I think I would have supported that from the beginning. The residents of that world are not us. They're different possibilities of ourselves, but they're not us. I have no memory of it all. Hell, if you hadn't said anything, I would have lived in blissful ignorance of it." Maria began scratching at her head, realizing that everything she was saying was going all over the place. "How do I put it...we are the sum of all of the experiences we've lived. Those happier versions of us are not us. Even if there were some horrible points and lives lost, blaming you for taking away our pasts and futures would be nothing but unnecessary whinging. It's pointless."

In the end, that was reality. Even if he stole those happy pasts and futures for his own sake, those who were left behind in the world he returned to were not the same people who he had slighted.

The maid picked herself off the bench and stood right before the spiky-haired boy, holding her confident smile. "I mean, just look at Enshuu. Even if things were better off for her in the other world, it would not be the her we're seeing now who's trying to carve out a new path for herself. It may be twisted, but I almost feel relieved that I'm the one still walking today and I'm sure she'd feel the same. So, don't worry about it. At least for me, anyway. Besides, if you're still going to carry that sin, I'll support you."

"Is this one of those fabled confessions of love, Maria-oneechan?"

"KYAAH!" With a scream, Maria jumped straight into an unamused Touma's lap. "DON'T SNEAK UP ON PEOPLE LIKE THAT, ENSHUU!"

"I see the knee-jerk reaction still dominates." Not even trying to resist, Touma made the most succinct comment he could come up with

"Shut up. That kind of reaction isn't easy to get over." Maria suppressed her voice so that the young girl wouldn't be able to hear.

"And this must be that 'whispering sweet nothings into your lover's ear' business!" Enshuu spoke with the most uncharacteristically innocent smile she could give. Much to Maria's dismay, her actions completely backfired.

"Eh-hem." She cleared her throat as she picked her butt off of the unfazed Kamijou-san's lap. With the grace of a maid, she stood and spoke three words. "Not even close."

"Tch." Enshuu turned her head to the side and clicked her tongue. Her pupils contracted for a few seconds, her hands twitched, and a just as out-of-character melancholy seemed to transiently take root on her countenance. "That's a shame." With those words, she turned back to face the two teenagers with a smile.

Despite the monster that smile was plastered on, Maria let herself back into a vulnerable state as she placed her hand on Enshuu's head.

Touma, having finally finished his drink during Maria's and Enshuu's antics stood up as well. "By the way, why are you back? Weren't you playing with the others?"

"Kagun-ojiisan said it was going to rain so we decided to split up." Enshuu said, poking at the 1seg TV screen. As if on cue, Touma started to feel droplets of water landing on his face and hair.

Iron wall Kamijou, fresh out of the hospital, lacked an umbrella to go out with and by the looks of it so did Maria (much to her embarrassment) and the young Kihara. "Let's find a convenience store."

The two girls nodded in agreement and they all began to speed walk out of the park. Luckily, the three were able to find a convenience store relatively quickly due to there being two of them right outside the park entrance before the short drizzle became a downpour.

"And I still have to buy groceries too..."

Still groaning, Kamijou Touma stared out through the window at the bleak, rain-filled world outside him. Even if he got an umbrella, he would have to traverse the heavy rain to get some food and then head back home. Today was bound to be a long day no matter what.

"Come to think of it, Enshuu-chan. What are you going to do after this?" Kamijou turned back to Enshuu who was now alone. After stealing a quick glance at the counter, it seemed that Maria had already made her way to the counter with three umbrellas. Let it never be said that she wasn't effective.

"I don't know."

That didn't sound right. The prospect of leaving her out in the rain like this did not sit well with Touma even if she was a monster in her own right. "How about coming over to my place for dinner? I'm sure I can cook something up for another mouth and I'm sure Index would love making a new friend her age."

"Mmmm..." The girl gave no answer as she continued to sort out her thoughts, but found herself interrupted by the flashing lights on the phone she had around her neck. After staring at it for a good minute, she turned it off. "I can't do that." Rather than be apologetic about it, she simply stated her intent in the most matter of fact way possible. "I have something I must do."

"I see."

"Thank you for today, Touma-oniichan." It was sudden, but the girl who never qualified as a Kihara was, for some reason, showing her gratitude to the teenage boy and girl who she had once tried to kill. "And Maria-oneechan too. Thank you for everything, but I must go."

With her expression done, she made her way to the door. "Why? Where?"

Even though the boy had asked, she could not muster up the capability to say anything. "I'm sorry." Her innocent, child-like smile from before had been replaced by one that was clearly affected. "I'm not at leisure to say." Without another word, she walked out the doors and into that rainy city.

"So, she left, huh. Seems like this umbrella's going to waste." Maria frowned as she walked up to Touma with three umbrellas in hand. She handed over one of the umbrellas before staring out into the rainy outdoors like Touma was doing.

"I'm going after her." He stepped out into the rain outdoors and opened his umbrella. He had no clue where she had gone, but he would find her.

"You sensed something wrong too, huh?" Maria came up behind him with her own umbrella open. Touma nodded. Everything about Enshuu was genuine up until those final moments. Even if she couldn't cry out those words, everything about her was screaming it in those final moments.

"Let's go."

* * *

 **Interlude 01**

The Magical Powered Kanamin ending theme began to resound throughout the Kamijou residence, signaling the closure of another episode of a certain freeloader nun's favorite show.

"Aaaaaah. That was good." With a sigh of satisfaction, that freeloader nun shut off the television. "What do you think, Hyouka?"

The young nun, Index, while sitting on her usual spot on Touma's bed, picked up the yawning Sphinx off her lap and put him on his own little cat-bed before leaning back onto Hyouka's shoulder.

"It was a-alright." The brunette in glasses with a side ponytail and a large chest poked her index fingers together as she tried to fumble around for an answer. "I feel a bit sad for Kanamin at the end, though."

"That's a lukewarm answer." Index pouted, before letting go and wrapping her arms around her friend. "But that's alright. I forgive you Hyouka."

"I may never understand what value you see such insipid entertainment."

At the sound of those words, Index shot a death glare at the god-turned-fairy who was currently sitting on the table and munching on a potato chip fragment.

"It figures a god of war would never understand the subtleties of such a show."

Not letting those words slide, Othinus reciprocated the death glare from her position of safety. But rather than speak, she took one simple action: take a bite out of the potato chip fragment.

"NGAAAAAAAH!" The nun finally screamed up in agony and stood up, shifting her glare away from the war god who was enjoying a meal to the clock. "It's 19:00 already. Where's Touma..."

"He is running a bit late." Hyouka, finally finding a break in the tense atmosphere between the nun and the fairy, spoke up in agreement.

"I figured he would be out buying ingredients for dinner but it's taking longer than I'd expect."

With the last statement from Othinus, the three looked at each other for a few seconds before sighing in synchrony.

"He got caught up in something again."

"Definitely."

"Is it alright to leave him alone like this?"

The three girls once again let the sound of the now falling rain from outside conquer the atmosphere as Hyouka's question rang in their heads.

"Let's go find him."

Index stood up and picked Othinus off the table.

No more words were needed as the three picked up some umbrellas and headed out into the rainy city.

* * *

 **A/N: Chapter 1 is an odd case. I mentioned that I had put this on the back burner for a fair amount of time with it originally being a one-shot. Due to that, you can probably tell where in the chapter I had left off and picked back up again. I hope you all came to enjoy the chapter.**


	3. Chapter 02

**Chapter 02**

 **Return or Resistance.**

 _ **VARIEGATED_SELF.**_

 **1**

She was never qualified to be a Kihara. Yet, at the same time, she was still not fully human. Her Kihara-like nature was undeniable—a core part of herself that emerged even when others tried to suppress it completely.

But, those Kiharas could never fully accept her. She was very much an anomaly to those pure scientists who rejected humanity for the sake of sating their insatiable curiosities.

Yet, her human nature was undeniable.

But, those humans would never fully accept her. She was very much an anomaly to those humans who rejected their curiosity for the sake of their selfish desires.

In the end, she could never be accepted by the Kiharas. She could never be accepted by humans.

As she was the anomalous amalgam of both, she never had a place to go. She never had a self to maintain.

So, where did that leave Kihara Enshuu?

She didn't know.

Without concern for her comfort, she walked in the rain—slowly progressing into an alleyway near that park she played in earlier. As she her feet continued to splash droplets of water up from the ground step-by-step, the once warm atmosphere of that playground and the people who she had surrounded herself with had grown exponentially colder.

She had ended up resigned to whatever would come next.

Eventually, she came across an abandoned building with an open door. From the looks of it, it was likely once a store front now slated for demolition. The awning was torn apart. The hinges on the door were rusted. The glass that made up its windows was covered in dust and grime.

To put it bluntly, it was the kind of location where any form of shady thug would congregate and sure enough, that was the first thing Enshuu had noticed. Yet, she never once put up her guard or attempted to resist. As those disgruntled teenage boys and girls crowded around Enshuu, she did naught but stand in place.

"She was right. You really did come here without a fuss." The one who spoke up was a tall black-haired boy in a bandana and school uniform with a torn and worn down blazer. A smile that seemed to form on the cusp of terrified and relieved took shape on his face. "Hah. Maybe that bitch can really do it." Forcing himself to that feeling of relief, he squeezed those words out the best he could.

They all stood in silence for a minute, really letting whatever was floating through their thoughts sink in before the leader finally spoke up. "You're coming with us."

The footsteps of all twelve of them (plus Enshuu) began to echo as they finally started walking towards their next destination.

* * *

 **2**

"What the hell is going on here?" Opposite to the abandoned building in question was another one with shattered windows. Standing next to the windowsill and looking at the building across was a small black-haired girl with blonde streaks. Her eyes narrowed as she continued to focus straight on that entrance.

She was Kuroyoru Umidori, the leader of the battered organization known as the Freshmen and a former experimental specimen of the now defunct Dark May project.

"Damn that bastard." She cursed under her breath at the one who had hired her and her alone for this assignment.

 _"I'm sure you Freshmen are still in shambles after Agitate Halation."_ The voice of her client on the phone rang in her head. _"That's why I'm giving you a special assignment, Umidori-kun. It's a bit unorthodox for our world. Between good and evil, it's ironically good to a disgusting degree. Between like and dislike, it's invariably dislike. But, there's some romance in doing things this way._

Said bastard was a strange one for sure. His manner of speaking was entirely as unorthodox as this assignment, but Kuroyoru could not afford to be picky. Her reputation had plummeted after the first Fremea incident and Agitate Halation so an opportunity like this couldn't have come at a better time. Despite the strangeness of it all, the fact that a certain name had even been spoken in that briefing meant that what she had gotten herself into would be quite the reputation enhancer.

 _"Until the time specified, keep Kihara Enshuu out of enemy hands and eventually return her to us. Feel free to use_ _ **whatever means necessary**_ _."_

It isn't every day that one like her gets to be involved in the clout that works with those named Kihara, after all.

That being said, Kuroyoru was hardly the type of person who could be associated with the word 'protector'. In the end, she was a shy girl who would much rather work from the shadows and kill.

"How am I going to go about this..."

The girl furrowed her eyebrows and scowled as she looked at the building Kihara Enshuu had walked into. Even if everything was exactly as the client had been predicted, she had not been given any guidelines. Such was the trade-off for having complete freedom in her methods. In retrospect, she may have been a bit too greedy and hasty.

She wanted to scream. Such a conundrum was not something she desired to deal with nor was it something that would in any way be helpful.

 _DAMMIT! I HAVE NO IDEA WHO'S GOING TO BE DOWN THERE OR IF THIS COULD TURN INTO A FIREFIGHT THAT COULD KILL HER. WHO THE HELL THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A BRIGHT IDEA TO TURN A KILLER LIKE ME INTO A PROTECTOR?!_

It was not like she could truly ever understand her client's motivation. If she did ask, he would only call it a 'romantic proposition', after all.

"Between like and dislike, huh..." Despite needing to vent it all out, she simply spoke out those strange words of the client that had engraved themselves into her memory and sighed.

Trying to take it all in stride, she looked back out of the windowsill and saw something else. Two umbrellas carried by a running maid girl and a familiar high school boy moved down the road until they came to the door that Enshuu had entered through.

It only took a few seconds for Kuroyoru to finally start smiling and placing a foot on the windowsill. "This might be like."

* * *

 **3**

It all began with a single sentence.

"Get the hell away from that girl."

The spiky-haired boy made one simple demand to the twelve delinquents. Normally, confronting three, let alone twelve, would be downright impossible. But, there were certain things that could never be allowed to slide.

It was two vs twelve. If all went well, he could talk them down.

"Huuuuuuuuuuuuuh?" The delinquent leader gave a long, exaggerated grunt as the two that had so stupidly decided to confront them folded up their umbrellas. Despite his attempt at intimidation, the two refused to budge. Their eyes trained right onto him as the focus of their anger.

If all went well, Touma and Maria could talk them down. But Kamijou Touma knew he was not so lucky enough that things would proceed so smoothly.

"Was I being ambiguous?" There was not a hint of hesitation in his words. His entire body was wrapped in pure rage, so much that it looked like static electricity would scatter if something touched him.

Meanwhile, Maria kept her own mouth shut as the spiky-haired boy spoke for the both of them. Unlike the boy, she held some resentment towards the girl who he was trying to rescue. Even if she were a monster in her own right, that was no reason to abandon her. Even so, that stinging resentment remained, so she was hardly the one to to make such flashy declarations.

"I'll be as straightforward as possible. Let her go." So, that boy made his own. That was all it came down to.

The eleven other delinquents all reached towards their own concealed weapons, but stopped as their leader walked forward and held his hand out to the side as a signal. Instead, two of them made their way to Enshuu's sides and took position there while their leader walked up to Kamijou Touma. "Listen here, Mister Hero." As his stride finally stopped two paces away from the spiky-haired boy, he finally spoke up. "I'm sure you're perfectly aware that we can't comply." With a his left hand in his pocket, the delinquent leader gestured with his open right hand. "Rest assured, the girl came with us willingly so she won't be hurt in the slightest. If you're worried about her well-being, just scram and forget about it."

"You expect me to take that and leave it?" Despite the delinquent's assurance, the boy, unwavering, took a step forward with his pointed words in tow. "Some volition she has there. Look at her! She's forcing herself to keep silent. Frankly, I don't know what pressure you've put on her, but I can say for damn sure that she's crying out for help."

The delinquent boy gritted his teeth in response. That was not the answer he had been hoping for even if it was the one he had expected. He looked down into Kamijou Touma's eyes, but it was plain to see that he would not budge. With a sigh, he took a back-step and started scratching at his head. "Maybe you're right." Though it seemed at first glance that the delinquent leader had been swayed, his words were nothing more than a preface. "Even so, we have certain things we can't compromise on. Each and every one of us chose this path because it would grant us our revenge."

"There's nothing wrong with wanting to break apart everything that trampled upon us." One of the girls in the group spoke up.

"You can be as sanctimonious about how wrong our methods are or how much we're making other people suffer, hero-kun, but our hatred is real." Another one of the delinquents spoke up.

"Our hatred is justified." One after another, they continued to recite their own justifications.

"So, we'll all strike back, no matter the price we need to pay. That's our resolve. Skill-Out's resolve."

"That's so stupid! It makes no sense." It was Maria, who had been keeping her mouth shut since the beginning, who finally spoke up. "For revenge? Is your revenge worth that much?!"

Even if it was hypocritical for someone like her who saw Kihara Kagun's actions through to the very end, those events still left a bad taste. No matter what, she could not see through a repeat of Kihara Kagun's life and death. A bitter repeat of that life clothed in the skin of another human would leave a matching aftertaste in her mouth. Regardless of whether it could be called selfish or not, that was the reality of her psyche. That was why she remained unfazed when she heard the answer she had expected.

"Even if it isn't, that's all that we have left. That's all the city has left us."

Their dreams of being espers worth a damn had been crushed. Their dreams of having a home among each other in Skill Out had been crushed. Their dreams of being able to live happily without fear in the city had long since been crushed. At the end of it all, they were offered no salvation. They had no convenient hero who reached a hand out to provide it for them. So, what did they have left? The answer was nothing but obvious. Hatred, resignation, regret, and sorrow. The city had long since thrust those once hopeful boys and girls into the state where those feelings consumed.

"Even if we were to turn back, we have nothing left to return to."

In the end, some of the most dangerous types of people were those who no longer had anything to lose. Right then and there, those delinquents held a fervor that far surpassed religious zealots.

"Until we see Academy City receiving its just deserts, we can't stop." One of the girls in the delinquent group finished their leader's sentiments and the others continued.

"Even if we have to take a Kihara captive."

"Especially taking a Kihara captive and using her for our own ends."

"It's too late to stop it."

"Her plan has already begun."

"Soon, the city's guts will be exposed."

As if it were a mantra, each one of them spoke up until it was time for the leader to close it all off. "I'll ask again, hero. For your sake, get out of here."

Despite it all, Kamijou had patiently listened. It was not the first time he had heard something along these lines from Skill-Out. Memories of an incident two months ago were poking at him as he heard through the leader's words.

Despite actually speaking, they had come to an understanding but not a mutual agreement. Their two positions were immiscible. So, Kamijou would refuse to leave.

"Heh." And so, the leader began to laugh. "Hahahahahahahahahahahaha~"

He laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed.

It went on and on until his muscles gave out and he could laugh no more. Slowing his breathing, he looked down to the spiky-haired boy and the maid before giving out an almost weak smile. Was it a sign of resentment or regret? Was it directed towards the boy, towards the city or towards something else entirely? The answers remained muddled. _Even so—_

He raised his non-dominant left hand, showing the dorsum to his comrades in arms while motioning a backwards. Without any further warning, he dropped his left hand before quickly clenching his right and throwing that fist into the boy's face, all in one smooth swing.

"KAMIJOU!" The maid shouted, recoiling in horror at the sight of the first blow landing on the spiky-haired boy's face before taking a step forward to level her own blow at the leader.

"Stop." Holding his right palm to face the worried maid, a single word came out of his mouth before he spit out some clear fluid with a thin red shape running through it onto the ground off to his left. The maid halted as the boy finally turned his head back to face his assailant with a decisive glare. The delinquent leader had purely come towards Kamijou with the intent of going one on one. While he really didn't hold any value in fancy concepts like honor, he would not trample on that one opportunity he had been given.

So, he grinned. "That didn't even sting."

Without warning, the leader launched his fist straight at Kamijou once again. Keeping his arms in as if he were boxing, he kept his arms close and side-stepped, allowing the fist to graze by his cheek. As the fist passed by his face, Kamijou took a step forward and raised his right fist towards the leader's chin—a clean uppercut.

But, as soon as he made contact, dull strike to the back of his head knocked him off balance, pushing him ever so slightly forward. The delinquent had taken the opportunity to bend his elbow and let the force of taking a hit become his own weapon.

The two stumbled about, trying to regain their footing—at least that's what the delinquent leader had thought. But, Kamijou simply stepped down in front of himself, disregarded all care for balance and pushed forward, slamming shoulder first into the leader's abdomen. The leader didn't have any time to think as his body was thrown back, letting the force of the ground on his back knock the air out of him.

"There was no point." Rather than getting over him and trying to finish the job, Touma stared at the leader from where he stood while trying to shake off getting hit from the back of the head. There was nothing he could say anymore. No matter what the delinquent leader was doing, he could not abide by that, regardless of Kihara Enshuu's own sins. "So, just stop this."

That was not the kind of person he was.

With the leader on the floor, it had seemed he was likely down for the count, even if he was still conscious, so Kamijou Touma shifted his glance to the remaining Skill-Outs standing behind him.

Despite seeing their leader beaten in only a few seconds, they did not even seem to have lost their passions in the slightest. If anything, whatever flames had been burning had likely only been further incensed with their leader's defeat.

One of them took a step forward.

Then another.

Then another.

With each echoing footstep, another one followed till all but the two standing guard over Enshuu had moved forward. In a single moment, the victory he should have attained had been turned into a completely disadvantageous situation.

By his side, the maid readied into fighting stance. Yet, it was still a 9-2 disadvantage,

The boy's thoughts raced. Enshuu was right in front of him. Yet, the only winning move was to run.

 _DAMN IT!_

He clenched his fist and much like the maid, readied himself to drive his fist into the people before him. He knew he was outmatched, but even so…

 _THERE'S NO REASON TO ABANDON HER HERE!_

As soon as that thought raced through his head, a metallic clink sounded in between Kamijou and the now approaching delinquents. Their gazes immediately fixated on the source of a sound, a cylinder with a handle on top and numerous holes on its side.

From there it all happened in an instance. There was no time for anyone to react as the object detonated, unleashing a deafening roar and a searing light upon anyone who was looking towards it in the room.

Kamijou had instinctively drawn his hands above his face. He had no idea who had dropped the grenade between them, but it would be stupid to not expect an attack. As his ears rang in response to the cacophony and his eyes shut in response to the glare, he could no longer take in any more information from around him.

It was a feeling of complete isolation as he struggled to maintain balance as his body's own positional sense went haywire. Yet, despite it all, nothing came his way. Nothing but the stagnant air around him seemed to touch him.

"R-ly. I -'t be-e -o- l-t y-f dro- yo-r guar- like that." As the ringing in his ear started to die down to only be replaced by the voice of what sounded like a young girl, Kamijou finally opened his eyes and let his blurred vision focus, albeit slowly, on the scene before him and the speaker.

"You're the one who beat that Rensa bitch. Have a bit more dignity dammit." As his eyes finally focused, the speaker's form became clear. She was a familiar black-haired girl who he had fought alongside back in Hawaii and during the Agitate Halation incident—though, she looked different than he remembered due to the numerous hands sprouting from her body.

"Kuroyoru...Umidori…?" As he uttered that name, trying to recall it, he finally noticed the bodies of all of the delinquents on the floor. Remembering her tendencies, his mind immediately shifted towards assuming the worst case scenario. "You didn't—"

"Kill them? Kuroyoru, stifling her urge to spit on the bodies, sighed and scratched her head. "If only. That would have been so much easier but they're of more use to me alive than dead. Well, at least one of them, at least."

Hearing that, Kamijou breathed a sigh of relief. He really didn't want to have to swallow the pungent aftertaste that letting all of them get killed would have left behind. "Thanks, Kuroyoru."

"Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuh?!" Kuroyoru took on an almost disgusted look as she extended her utterance in a manner that would put the now unconscious leader to shame. "I don't need your thanks," she said, waving her hand to the boy as if telling him to go away. "So, keep that to yourself. I can't keep adding to my debts to you. That's all this is." Unfortunately, the young girl in black seemed to hold no blush, indicating that this was likely not some tsundere's attempt to brush off embarrassment.

"Debts?" Maria asked, once again breaking her long forced silence.

"It's none of your business." Kuroyoru said before walking to Kihara Enshuu who had taken the opportunity to lean against a wall while everything else had gone on. The answer didn't please Maria in the slightest, but it was likely the furthest she could get. This was hardly the kind of thing she wanted to shatter her pride on.

"In that case, why are you here?" Kamijou, deciding to let whatever the young girl was on about be bygones, took to the most important question.

"I don't think you want to know. Just keep yourself away from her," Kuroyoru pointed to the young Kihara as she spoke. "And bail out of this before you're in too de—"

"We already know her name and its significance," Maria said, deciding to not let the young girl finish her sentence. "We're already in too deep to back out."

"Why, you—" Kuroyoru, gnashing her teeth, began to charge back towards Maria with a fast walk.

"Okay, that's enough." Kamijou walked in between the two before Kuroyoru could let her temper flare up. Thankfully to him, that seemed to be enough for her to stop her march. "Kumokawa is right, though. So, it's not like anything you say can keep us out of this."

The grinding between her teeth was soon covered with a scowl before she finally sighed and acquiesced to the maid and the boy. "I was told to protect her." Lifting up her hand, she pointed with her thumb over her shoulder to Enshuu, who had taken to staring blankly outside the window. "Not my kind of job, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I'm a killer. Not a protector."

Maria grimaced. Despite how much she had already seen of the world, the idea of someone nonchalantly admitting to how much they leaned towards a preference to killing was not something she could ever get used to. "Then, why'd you come here?"

"I got a little inspiration~" Kuroyoru said with a smile. "I was just planning on tailing them but you guys had to just barge right in like morons. So, I figured why not just take out everything at once and bring the root cause here."

"I don't follow." Much like usual, Kamijou felt like the person explaining things thought he understood much more than he actually did.

"Really…?" Kuroyoru found herself scowling at Kamijou's general confusion. "Fine, fine. To put it bluntly, you don't think that some mere Skill-Outs would be able to know of the significance of the name 'Kihara' let alone go after one of them, do you?"

"So you're after their puppetmaster." Maria, getting a grasp on what the young cyborg had been hinting at, completed that girl's thought.

"That's the idea. I figured there's someone hiding in the background if a request was made to keep her safe. That means that I just have to draw them out and kill them." It was a simple line of logic, even if Kamijou and Kumokawa couldn't say that they fancied the end result much. Despite that, they couldn't deny the fact that drawing the mastermind out would be the quickest way to keep Enshuu safe.

While Kamijou stood, pondering over what he heard, Kumokawa walked over to where Enshuu was standing and looked into her eyes. "Was this all what you really wanted?"

"Maria-oneechan." The young girl stared at the maid and let out a sigh before averting her gaze. "If I had any desire to escape, I could've done so easily." It was in that moment that everyone else who was still conscious turned to look at her. That one sentence was all she needed to implicate how she felt about the entire situation. "That's the reality of those who inherit the name Kihara. No matter how much any of us want to try, we can't escape the world beyond ethics. You should have just let me quietly sink back into that world."

Her resignation to reality was something undeniable. As one who had never truly immersed himself in the world she lived in or even seen enough of said world, Kamijou Touma probably could never fathom that simple feeling she held. Even his experience in Othinus's hells would probably never be enough. After all, those hells were his and his alone. In that aspect, that meant they could never be anyone else's.

"That doesn't mean you have to just sit there and accept it."

"I don't need to sit there and accept it. That's just reality." One could only wonder if it was that girl's self shining through her curt words as she continued to shut down the words of her would-be savior. "So, just let me return to that world."

She may not have been qualified as a Kihara, but she was a Kihara nonetheless. The world where she could experiment without remorse or restraint—that hidden side to Academy City—was the only place she could truly consider her own.

That's what it meant for her to deny salvation.

"This is getting nowhere. You're not the right person for this at all, Kamijou." Kuroyoru blurted, seeing that the radiant hero had completely failed to reach out. With gusto, she pointed towards the young Kihara and made a declaration of her own. "So, come with me. My benefactor wants you kept safe for a reason and I can make connections along the way so that you can return to where you feel happiest. Going off with some strangers with a surface level connection to the Dark Side is reckless at best so just put your chips on a better investment like me. We can both benefit from this."

Enshuu stared at Kuroyoru for only a brief second before nodding. It was wordless, but it was all that was needed for a contract between those two girls to form.

"And that's that." Kuroyoru placed her fists at her hips, puffed out her chest and gave as big a grin as she could towards Kamijou and Kumokawa.

Kamijou, however, could not find himself satisfied to hear that. Beyond the surface level issues of the dark side, there was something underlying that seemed to bother him that he couldn't put his finger on—something that seemed to gnaw at him every time the girl mentioned her family name.

"I wouldn't say anything right now if I were you." Kuroyoru, however, spoke up before Kamijou could voice any dissatisfaction. "I know you hero types prefer to try to reach into the heart of the matter but there's a time and place for that. She's accepted our hand for now so just wait till we can say we've settled down before you try that crap."

She had read right through him. She had utterly defeated him. No matter what, she was in complete control of the situation. Regardless of what he wanted, that was the harsh reality. "Fine." It wasn't his preferred scenario, but he would have to accept that regardless. As long as Enshuu didn't fall into the hands of whoever was after her, he'd have his chance to reach out to her.

"So, what's the plan from here?" Kumokawa asked.

"You guys really are sticking around, huh?" Kuroyoru sighed. Even though she had expected it. Even though she had spoken as if that were fact, she still couldn't help but hold out hope. It's such a shame that hope didn't last longer. "Right now, we should probably take one of these bastards," she said, prodding one of the unconscious female delinquents on the head with her heel. "And move to a safer location. We can question them and lure them out." She turned her head to Kamijou and asked him, "So, which one do you want to pick?"

"The leader." The answer was almost immediate. Pragmatically speaking, the leader was the one who probably held the most contact with the one who had hired them. He would be the best person to grill for information. It was a simple, yet effective reason. "I refuse to have the male to female ratio drop any further."

Kuroyoru's eyes widened as a blank look took over her face. On the other hand, Kumokawa made a serious attempt to stifle her laughter. A serious failed attempt, that is.

"You're kidding me."

"Pfft."

"Well, there's also the fact that the leader is probably the one who has the most information and contact ability."

"Oh, thank god. You did have a good reason." As Kuroyoru took in that feeling of relief, Kumokawa finally took control of her diaphragm and stopped any laughter from escaping. "In that case, we should start to move. Kamijou, pick up the—"

Kuroyoru cut herself off as something caught her attention from her peripheral vision. She had noticed a metallic glint off in the distance, off in a space between buildings that were outside of the musty window. "EVERYONE GET DOWN!"

Without hesitation, Kamijou and Kuroyoru immediately dropped to the ground while Kumokawa grabbed Enshuu and brought them both to the ground. As if on cue, countless projectiles tore through the window and the wall holding it like paper. Heat emanated throughout the room as those projectiles moving at supersonic speeds burned up from the friction.

It was a weapon that Kamijou was all too familiar with—a railgun. He could only think of one person who could fire off that attack but even she never seemed to have ever used rapid fire like their assailant had. After less than a minute, the onslaught had come to an end. Kamijou turned his head while he was still grounded to see holes in the walls and debris fallen over near the sight of attack.

"My, my." Thunks of metal hitting the ground resounded one-by-one like footsteps as a singular female voice echoed out. As Kamijou and the others finally stood back up, they could finally see what had made such a deadly assault. "I didn't expect Skill-Out to fail like this. External interference can be such a pain."

It was a five meter mechanical monstrosity one could call akin to a praying mantis. On top of it was a large cylindrical tank for storing shells and on each of its scythe-like arms was a three-barrel Gatling gun attached.

"Well, that's fine. These kinds of bumps can be easily smoothed over."

It was a powered suit both Kamijou and Kuroyoru knew well.

"It's a pleasure to meet you all. I'm the mastermind you're so desperately looking for." An almost sing-song voice came from it.

FIVE_Over Modelcase_"RAILGUN".

* * *

 **Interlude 02**

"I'm surprised you actually decided to call Anti-Skill for once," Yomikawa Aiho said to Accelerator. Normally, she would be wearing a green tracksuit, but since she was on duty, she was wearing the standard issue Anti-Skill uniform. "It's a welcome change."

"Piss off. You and I both know that I'd rather not get involved with you guys or bring you into this." Accelerator said before clicking his tongue and looking at the wreckage in front of him. The truck that he had once stood in and that had burst into flames around him had been left as nothing more than burnt refuse. The sensors and screens inside had all been damaged irreversibly and there was no chance at repair anymore.

Since the truck no longer had any value due to all important information like license plates and the computers themselves being destroyed, he had no real reason to stay on the truck itself. He had no leads at this point and much to his dislike, his can of coffee was long since made useless as it got caught in the flames.

So, he did what any upstanding citizen would do: call Anti-Skill, get some more coffee from a nearby vending machine, and find a place to sit and wait.

Yomikawa stood over the boy and chuckled. Because of how strong he was, he was rarely the type to ask for help from or rely on any adults. "Exactly. You'd keep this kind of thing a secret and do things under the table. So, what is it you're after?"  
"Cutting straight to the chase for once?" Accelerator said, taking a quick sip of his coffee. "I have my doubts you were able to ascertain anything from that smoldering pile of junk."

Yomikawa remained silent, opting to let Accelerator continue on. She figured that he would probably glean her response from that as a concurrence.

"The truck was some data collection facility before it blew up. Unfortunately, I only came by that thing by pure coincidence. I don't have the intelligence network to look for it and my choker isn't particularly suited for aerial searches." He tapped at his choker's battery with his spare hand's index finger. Aerial searches would mean long use of his ability and quick discharge of the battery as a result. Even if he could create some makeshift method of charging it like he did during the Ichihanaransai, that kind of measure would not make up for the drainage. "So you're going to let me in on Anti-Skill's intel so I can locate the others."

"And what if I refuse?" In the end, that was the kind of person she was. Letting a child run head first into a dangerous situation or enabling that kind of thing was not something she was keen on doing. Accelerator, specifically, was someone who she would much rather have seen embarking of the road of a peaceful life than gravitating towards one of violence.

Without a word, Accelerator stood up, straightened his cane, and began to walk towards Yomikawa. "That won't stop me. Unfortunately, this is my goddamn mess as usual." Accelerator stopped and looked her straight in the eye. "It's my job to clean this shit up. Whether you assist or refuse to do so won't change that fact. Try and contain me and I'll simply fly away. Try and refuse and I'll simply brute force another path."

Yomikawa simply sighed and placed her hand on the boy's head, pushing a hard sensation onto his cranium. "Well, then. Have fun. Just be careful and try to come back before dinner. A certain someone will probably get cross with ya if you don't."

After taking off her hand, she walked away, waving.

He shook the can of coffee he had before tossing it at the head of a nearby cleaning robot. "Was that supposed to be subtle?" With his now freed hand, he picked up whatever was sitting on his head. It was a simple data terminal with an Anti-Skill logo on the back—likely as standard issue as the woman's uniform.

If she couldn't stop him, she'd help make things go more smoothly. Accelerator could honestly not tell what was going through Yomikawa's head but that line of reasoning sounded right even if it didn't particularly match her. Her last words to him were honest enough, after all.

"Now, then." Accelerator sat back down with the device in hand and smiled. "Where shall we start?"

* * *

 **A/N: I'm not dead~**

 **That aside, welcome to Chapter 2. Yet again, the cast has increased in size. I can only wonder if I'll fall into the trappings of cast bloating. That being said, I'm noticing the odd accumulation of characters whose names start with K. Totally coincidental, but just a fun observation.**

 **To the Guest reviewer who mentioned that part of the last chapter was on AnimeSuki, thanks for reminding me. I had actually completely forgotten about that. It really has been a long time.**

 **Hope you all enjoyed. Till next time~**


	4. Chapter 03

**Chapter 03**

 **The Mastermind Struts Upon the Stage.**

 _ **Into_the_Frequency_Domain.**_

 **1**

Despite the heavy rain continuing to pound upon everything that lay beneath the sky, the silhouette they had witnessed was unmistakable. The unholy monstrosity before them was a mechanical wonder that neither Umidori, Touma, nor Maria could defeat. If there was any solace at this moment, it was the fact that none of the bodies of the knocked out Skill-Outs were scuffed up from the shattered glass and debris.

"I didn't think you'd show up so quickly." Kuroyoru's mouth curved up into a devilish smile as the thunks of metal on the ground grew louder simultaneously with the growth of the silhouette's size.

Kamijou, shifting his gaze upon Kuroyoru, could, however, see the reality behind that smile. It was plain as day that the girl was only putting up a front. Though, he was unsure whether the pilot of the FIVE_OVER could discern that.

It was hardly their first encounters with the machine or its class, after all. Kuroyoru's subordinate Silver Cross Alpha had one in his arsenal and Kamijou had seen them first hand in both Baggage City, Denmark, and on that mountaintop in District 21. But, for Kamijou, each situation had their own condition that allowed him to make it through in one piece.

"Kumokawa. Take Enshuu and run." They could not defeat the machine. That much was obvious. Even if the puppetmaster had shown up personally and was piloting the machine, there was zero chance of anything resembling a total victory if Kamijou and Kuroyoru had focused on defeat and capture.

"Right." Kumokawa, not stopping to question Kamijou's logic, grabbed Enshuu's hand and began to towards the doorway away from the wall. It was fairly obvious what he had decided in the long term. If they made their objective victory, they would only suffer a crushing loss. In that case, they simply needed to shift their objectives from complete victory to survival and safety.

There was no need to question it loudly.

All they had to do was get to safety and regroup.

Unfortunately—

Before they could move, a glowing orange light smashed into the wall a few feet off to the side from the maid and the young Kihara, breaking it into pieces and leaving a shallow, albeit existent, crater in its place. Though, it would have been far more accurate to say that something had collided into it and torn it to shreds.

"I'd appreciate it if the four of you would just stay in place." The voice of the pilot echoed throughout that alleyway. As Maria looked back to the mantis-esque machine, she saw steam rising from beneath the blade of one of the sickles.

"I'm sure you already realize that you're in complete checkmate here." The voice continued on, declaring its victory. "Even if those two were somehow able to buy you time, I can still seek you out faster than you can escape and shoot you from over a kilometer away. So, just drop the charade and hand Kihara Enshuu over."

"Screw that." As Kamijou spat that out, Kuroyoru began to side-step towards behind the wall, slowly and hopefully, unnoticed. "I already said it. How many times are people like you going to make me repeat this? I'm not abandoning her. That's the end of it."

Unlike Kuroyoru, who had shifted off to the side and disappeared, Kamijou took an entirely different route: forward. The creaks of breaking glass sounded beneath his foot as he took step after step slowly forward through the hole initially created by the machine's first shot.

"I had hoped this would have acted as a strong enough deterrent. But, I can see—" The machine stopped progressing forward and quickly aimed its other scythe to its right, shooting another round towards the building wall next to it.

As the wall of that building collapsed, Kuroyoru jumped out from the side of the fallen rubble and aimed her hand at the machine, forming one of her nitrogen spears and thrusting it. She may not have been the user of such a machine, but she knew exactly where the cockpit lay.

She just needed to pierce through it.

"That I was wrong. So, fall."

As if obeying her, Kuroyoru fell to the ground. A sense of vertigo permeated her brain and her elbows extended as she fell forward with the spears pierced onto the ground. Despite her arm bracing her, she continued to fall straight to the ground, dissipating her spears before her body weight tore her arms and their attachments of her scapular sockets. As she lay on the floor, her elbows, wrists, and fingers all remained completely straightened.

"What the hell?!" She struggled to rationalize what was going on but the combination of the throbbing headache, dizziness, and the pain from slamming face and chest first into the rubble-laden ground prevented her from uttering more than that.

But, that was not all.

The same had happened to Kamijou and Kumokawa in the other building. The two of them had just as unceremoniously fell to the ground, as their consciousness began to flicker in and out with the pulsations of pain and vertigo they had felt.

 _This isn't gravity!_ As Kamijou tried to piece together what had happened, one thing was certain. He was on the ground and the machine that had been looming tall over them before was now looming taller.

 _There has to be something!_ The fact that he was still on the ground with his muscles tensed meant that it wasn't some force keeping them down. He tried to force his arms to move, but it was as if his body was stiffened to the point where no force he put in could overcome it. Moreover, Imagine Breaker was reacting to nothing.

"Besides, this wasn't up to you to begin with." The voice continued on as the sound of a hatch opening came from the side of the machine's abdomen. "Her salvation and the salvation of everyone else here isn't for any of you to selfishly decide."

A slender feminine figure walked out and grabbed onto a handle with a foot hold below before an automatic pulley brought her down to the ground. At the very least, Kamijou could only assume it was a feminine figure based on the curves he could see. The figure was completely covered from head to toe in a tight bodysuit and a helmet. Given her height, though, she couldn't have been much older than Kamijou himself.

But, despite exiting the safety of the FIVE_OVER, she did not move an inch from where she stood. Umidori could no longer pierce her and Kamijou and Kumokawa, who depended on being able to close the gap and fight in close quarters were grounded completely.

No, there was no need for her to walk.

She simply held her hand out, as if beckoning a downtrodden child towards her.

And said downtrodden child simply began to walk. Kamijou needed to only hear the sound of light footsteps to realize what was going on.

 _"What are you doing, Enshuu?"_ Yet, despite the realization, it was not him who spoke. It was not the one from the dark side who was used to betrayal either.

The first to speak was that young maid-in-training who should have been the most repulsed by the young Kihara.

Yet, despite it all, Enshuu continued her slow gait towards the assailant. "Maria-oneechan. It was never meant to be from the start. I'm sure you and Touma-oniichan were fully intent on saving me, but..." At this point, it was patently obvious what she was going to say. "No matter what, I'm an aberration that doesn't fit in either world. Neither as a Kihara nor a human being. Regardless of what I do, there will always be that sensation that something's not right."

Just like when she had walked into the arms of those Skill-Out delinquents, she was once again walking towards someone who would whisk her away to some unknown place. In some twisted way, one could liken it to walking towards a knight in shining armor.

But, what she was looking for was far from salvation.

Someone who could not fit properly into a standard archetype like her could not ask for salvation from either.

She could only wander until her self was worn down to a smooth shadow of its former state.

At the essence, Kuroyoru's offer was merely a stopgap or a patch while Enshuu could figure something out.

"It was the same for Kagun-ojiisan as well." Maria and Touma could no longer see it, but as she spoke of that man, an almost pensive expression began to take root on her face.

"Forget about this all and move on." The bodysuit girl spoke out as she let her hand fall back to her side. As she did, Kihara Enshuu finally took her place next to the woman and turned to face everyone who was now laying on the floor.

"This is farewell, Touma-oniichan. Maria-oneechan."

"Don't screw with me, Enshuu!" It was as if something had boiled over in Kamijou's mind. Unable to contain that seething rage that seemed to be sprouting quickly, he shouted, not to the assailant, but to Enshuu. Even though he could no longer move most of his muscles and his body lay flat on the ground. Even as he could feel the nausea permeating through his consciousness, he still attempted to clench his fist and shout. "Was this really what you wanted?! Regardless of what you do, things will never me right? Screw that! That's just giving up and throwing away all possibilities! Is that really what you wanted? ANSWER ME, ENSHUU!"

His rage was laced with desperation, but no matter what, the sentiment was genuine—one that sprung from that childish philosophy he had truly come to understand over the course of billions of years.

But, Enshuu simply stared back, refusing to answer. Despite it all, she would not validate that rage in the slightest.

"That's a wrap, I see." The helmeted figure simply put her hand in front of Enshuu's face before the girl instantly lost consciousness and fell over onto her.

"Don't you dare leave!" He had continued to shout out as the helmeted figure picked up Enshuu's unconscious form and tossed it over her shoulder.

Yet, under the pitter-patter of the rain slamming on the ground (and them), he heard a sigh. Or at the very least, he thought he heard one through her helmet in conjunction with her chest falling. "Like I said, just forget about this and move on. You are not monsters in the slightest, so you shouldn't try to stick your hands into this quagmire."

That was all Kamijou heard and saw before his eyelids grew heavy and he completely passed out.

* * *

 **2**

In another alleyway, many meters away, an eighteen-wheeler truck was waiting with the back door to its Gekota-themed semi-trailer wide open. One would think this would be a cause for alarm, especially in this rainy weather, but the two people sitting in the driver's and passenger's seats seemed to be too busy focusing on a busy message board to really take any issue with that.

After all, they had kept a couple of cameras inside the darkened interior of the container. Had there been any need to deal with an issue, they could have done anything from within the truck tractor.

*beep* *beep*

A loud alarm sounded off from the radar they had installed on the dashboard.

"She's back~"

"That was faster than expected."

Pleasantly surprised, they quickly flicked on the switch to turn power to the container's lights on and watched as a mantis-like mechanical monstrosity hovered towards the entrance in reverse. As the entirety of its body curled into a more compact form, it easily entered the semi-trailer, slowing down until the far end of its abdomen docked into a socket in the wall right behind the tractor.

With that, it powered down and let its feet gently land on the floor as the door to the semi-trailer closed.

"Welcome back, Kizuna." The girl in the driver's seat said through the microphone in the trailer. As the girl's surname reverberated through the speakers in the trailer, the cockpit of the powered suit that had just entered opened up. "We have some minor disturbances. A certain someone isn't taking your warning into account and has already destroyed two of the monitoring stations."

"Begin heading back to point 9S." The person inside issued an order as she jumped out of the cockpit and onto the matted floors of the container. "Forget about him for now. He'll be on a wild goose chase for some time if that's what he's chosen to go after."

As she spoke, she reached for the zipper on her bodysuit and proceeded to undo it, slowly letting her naked form come into view before finally removing the whole thing and tossing it onto a hanger on the side. As her form came into view on the cameras, she felt the initial push of the vehicle beginning to move.

"Was it alright to leave them all unconscious? They could come back to interfere with us," the boy in the passenger seat asked, looking at the combat log on the suit.

As she removed her helmet and let her long, wavy hair out, she walked towards a nearby towel and began to wipe her now moist skin off and continued to speak. "They're not our targets. Besides, even if those Skill-Outs failed to uphold their end of the bargain, we can still show them what we promised. Which reminds me. Please do contact them and let them know that the capture was successful, would you?" The girl called Kizuna pointed her finger as if gesturing a gun at the inside of the cockpit and winked to nobody in particular, seeing as the girl sitting inside it was still unconscious, before picking up an outfit that she had laid out in the trailer beforehand.

"So, what's Ayumu-kun's status?" As she started putting on her new clothes, she began to start asking questions.

And the response she heard was exactly what she had hoped to hear.

"He should already be accessing it."

The girl looked at her hands for a bit as they trembled ever so slightly in conjunction with the rhythmic movements of the truck.

"The _i_ th District."

* * *

 **3**

"She's gone." Othinus seemed to speak as Index continued to walk underneath her umbrella. They had been searching alongside Kazakiri for Touma but the obvious had ended up happening. They had been unable to find him, so, they began to head to the first place they could think of any significance—the hospital.

Or at least the would have had they not halted partway there near a market Index had been banned from for gorging on the free samples.

It was hardly the visibility (or general lack thereof) in the rain that prompted Othinus's words. Kazakiri Hyouka was genuinely gone. She had frowned while Index decided to take refuge underneath the market's awning and look out into the street ahead of them.

"She'll be back." Index, confident of her friend's eventual return decided to stand back for a bit and wait.

"She probably will be, but is it smart to just wait around like this while the human goes who knows where?"

"But if we don't, Hyouka will get lost." Index seemed to be adamant, much to Othinus's dismay. The two of them knew too well that Kamijou Touma would not sit still if he was indeed caught up in something. That was how he always was.

As she stood, with her feet planted on the ground and ready to be as unmoved as a great oak, an eighteen-wheeler truck with Gekota plastered all over the semi-trailer drove by on the generally empty road.

Othinus, hearing the loud sounds of the wheels kicking up water, gave a quick glance, narrowing her one eye, to the passing vehicle before it was finally out of the distance where either Index or she could hear any sounds from it.

"We'll move once she returns. Besides, it's not like I won't end up finding Touma sooner or later, right?"

While Index was hardly incorrect, there was something about how much the nun was taking for granted that Othinus found off-putting.

But, as her own mobility was only so great, she had to defer to the great tyrant in white.

"Fine."

Besides, she would be able to find her understander eventually. One way or another, all paths would lead back to Kamijou Touma for those two.

* * *

 **Interlude 03**

She had already flickered out. Kazakiri Hyouka was fully aware of that. Even as the city around took on a form without shadows and the characteristic feeling of weightlessness and stagnancy in the air, she still held on to the umbrella she had been carrying when she had left the Kamijou Residence.

But despite being pulled away to this phase, she still smiled somewhat. She had an anchor in Index who would be waiting for her prompt return.

So, she stood with the umbrella futilely shielding her from the shimmers as a few of the districts residents passed by her, with some changing shape to more familiar forms for a high school girl.

No matter how much she had tried to come to terms with it, she could never truly find that as anything other than discomforting.

However, there was something that stood out in this world even more than the girl with the umbrella in a rainless world.

"So, this is the _i_ th District."

In the middle of the empty road in front of her stood a boy. He was wearing loose cargo pants, a hoodie, and goggles that covered his eyes. If one looked at his chestnut brown hair, the image of someone who had just gotten out of bed would come straight to mind. Unlike the remainder of the world around them, there was an almost solid presence to him.

Yes, a solid presence in a world where the residents felt almost ephemeral.

Such a paradoxical existence in this phase was something that should have only been held by that girl and that so-called Holy Guardian Angel.

And, so the world around her changed—more accurately, the residents did. Their formed all changed into those of Anti-Skills, complete with riot gear pointed towards the newcomer.

Despite the world around him going on alert, though, the boy did not flinch in the slightest. He maintained a light smile as he looked at Hyouka.

"Do not worry. I'm not here to do you any harm."

Kazakiri Hyouka was rarely the type to get angry. However, there was something about that boy that was hidden behind that smile. No matter how much he tried to mask it, it was a pungent sensation that was reminiscent of that which had permeated the city on September 30th.

"What do you want?" she asked as she clenched her fist and grit her teeth.

"Getting here was enough to count as a success. Kizuna should be happy to hear that the plan can now proceed to the next phase."

"WHAT ARE YOU AFTER?!" The pressure she was emitting was something she had only directed towards that Holy Guardian Angel as they watched the conclusion of World War III on high. The boy before her was a threat to everything she held dear. That was evident from whatever miasma he was trying to mask. So, she took one step forward onto that road. And then another.

And she reached out her hand towards the collar sticking out from that boy's hoodie, as if uncharacteristically trying to threaten him. But, before she could make contact, that boy's form began to grow transparent.

He only said one word right before his form was completely erased from that phase, before Hyouka could finally take hold of him.

"Happiness."

With his existence gone from the phase, so was his miasma. Along with that, the girl's own pressure, now left unopposed quickly dissipated as her knees grow weak and she collapsed onto the ground, supporting herself with her hands.

The people around her who had all changed to suit her need at the time turned back into different people of varying backgrounds and simply continued on about their daily lives.

She was frustrated.

Once again, the world had fluctuated for her convenience. Once again, she had impacted and put the lives of the phase's residents in danger due to her own incompetence.

And she hated it. The tears streaming down her face were proof of that.

But, beyond that all, there was something that was clear here.

"They're in danger."

The friends who she cared so deeply for were in danger. There was no time to delay. She could not let her frustrations block her.

So, she stood up and wiped her tears with the sleeve of her school uniform.

Even if her eyes were still puffy from crying, she could not let the ramifications of this breach stand. She would protect that tiny world she held dear.

* * *

 **A/N: I live once again, resurfacing from the depths of pathology and med school to throw yet another chapter. As you can probably tell, real life gets in the way and makes writing a very slow process. But it gets done so, it's hardly the worst case scenario, though it's still one that can be improved.**

 **That being said, I've been generally on the nose with previous chapter subtitles, so I'm kinda hoping that the meaning behind the current one doesn't fly over everyone's heads.**

 **I've also finally gotten to introduce this fic's villain...antagonist...her. Kizuna, as she shall be referred to for now, is a weird case, even by Academy City standards, and I was hoping to give her a certain presence-not an intimidating one, actually, but one that's far more terrifying than intimidation. We'll see how that plays out as I get to characterize her. On another note, I can say I have hopefully given enough clues to deduce her ability at this stage, and she is an Esper. I wonder how many will figure it out already.**

 **For what it's worth, I hope to give all the characters that have shown themselves some substantial enough character development.**

 **After NT21 and the beautiful and genuine work of art that Aleister's Arc has been, I have way too high a bar to live up to. Though, I guess it's my fault for using that as my bar~**

 **The first act (not of the archetypal three-act structure, mind you) of the story has now come to a close.**

 **With that, I set my pen down till the next chapter.**

 **...Goddammit, it's another K name. It's an odd fixation, but it's something I can't help but find glaring.**


	5. Chapter 04

**Chapter 04**

 **Caged Ant Outside the IDEAL.**

 _ **Singing_Jailbird.**_

 **1**

If one word could be used to define the Reformatory, it would ultimately be gloomy. Despite some level of sheen coming off the anechoic walls of the rooms the prisoners all slept in, Mitsuari Ayu could only truly ever describe the setting as gloomy.

Her situation was the epitome of what one could describe as a fall from grace. From Clone Dolly to Tokiwadai and down into the gutter, Mitsuari Ayu was fully aware of the fact that she had fallen from a position most people would've given an arm and a leg to be in.

"There's nothing to do..." Yet, despite the situation, the girl could only sigh out of boredom. She had fallen from grace, yet those simple feelings of boredom and inadequacy would never truly be wiped. Even if she had only been in there for one day, she had already been consumed by that incomparably dangerous beast.

It was only natural though. The rocky road she had traveled and the obsessions she had harbored had led to this point, just as it had led her to encountering that boy once again.

Despite traversing in hell and ending up with her wings clipped in this ridiculous facility, though, she could say that she accepted the result.

 _I got to meet him again…_

She smiled as she thought that. It was not one of the many she had shown when she had been constantly outwitting the Queen Bee. It was no longer a mask used to hide her hatred for the world around her.

Mitsuari Ayu had found solace that she could once again walk in the light some day, despite being mired a darkness of her own device. She could count herself among the lucky considering that she hadn't been taken out by some sniper for the people behind her considering the whale-sized support backing those who had used her. She had wondered numerous times after she had successfully been transferred to the Reformatory what happened in the background while she was active and subsequently left inactive, but there was no real use in trying to figure it out. It wasn't like she would ever really know anymore.

In that case, it was just a matter of waiting for her sentence to come to a close.

Even if it was boring and generally uneventful, she would eventually find herself outside the walls of the Academy City reformatory.

Whenever the world, or at least, whenever that girl considered her sins purified and that the fangs of the world she had irritated would no longer be directed towards her.

"If only it wasn't so boring." Ayu sighed as she turned on her side and faced away from the door, curling up slightly.

"Inmate Mitsuari." A loud voice echoed, likely from one of the guards, through the bars on the door from the other side. "You have a visitor."

"Eh?"

As that single announcement broke the monotony of a single day of prison life, Mitsuari Ayu's body shot up from her bed and she let her feet touch the floor. She stared in disbelief at the bars on the door, but that feeling was replaced with confusion as soon as the door opened.

Unfortunately, the best choice in this scenario was not to confront or question the personnel who had come to her, but to just play along with it. It wasn't like she had no questions to ask. But, she was a small dainty maiden with zero combat strength and an ability that was suppressed by the facility's AIM Jammers and he was relatively big, confident, and muscular—probably the best combination for someone who was working in the Reformatory, given the reputation for what happened to guards there.

So, she nodded, got up, and followed the man as he took her to what was likely a stereotypical place for visitors to talk to inmates.

The big problem facing Ayu now, though, was who was coming to visit her? Was it Shokuhou? She obviously couldn't send someone from her clique due to possible complications with the AIM Jammer. Was she here to discuss the details of the arrangement? After all, it was thanks to her that she was currently in the safety of a prison (a statement she would have laughed at before today) rather than riddled with bullet wounds and floating down a river.

The girl placed a hand on her scalp and moved her fingers around as she walked and averted her gaze off to a random corner.

 _Maybe I really should apologize to her at some point._

She couldn't say that her hatred from Shokuhou Misaki didn't linger. She still blamed her for everything that went wrong in Clone Dolly. But, she was still here, helping her out. Despite being the victor in the end, she had chosen to help the loser out.

 _Alright, Ayu!_ She slapped herself lightly on the cheeks to snap herself into reality. _We can do this! When you see her on the other side of that reinforced glass, the first thing you're doing is apologizing._

With a vigorous nod, she could finally say she was ready for whatever her visitor would throw at her.

"Get in." The guard, who had mostly been silent up until now, opened up a door and politely, or as politely as one could with a command, directed her inwards.

As she walked in, she took a deep breath, completely ignoring the sound of the door closing behind her, and pumped her fists in the air.

That's right, little Ayu. You can do it~

She walked towards the chair seated in front of reinforced glass. At that moment, her shoulders dropped and her newfound serenity was replaced with a luminescent blush and pure confusion.

On the other side of her was not the blonde girl with shiitake eyes she had been expecting but a certain spiky-haired boy. Granted, he had a few other girls with her, but that was beside the point.

"Hi," the boy, with a strained smile, said.

In stark contrast, the girl had broken down though. She tapped her once fluffy hair a couple of times and then moved her hand to her cheek. Tears welled up in her eyes and in a matter of seconds, she bolted towards the door she had come in through and grabbed at the handle pulling it vigorously in an attempt to open it

As she did, a single sentence echoed loudly through the visitation area. "I'M NOT READY YET!"

Easy come, easy go.

Though, perhaps, it may be best to take a few steps back observe the lead-up while she cools down.

* * *

 **2**

The fluorescent lights on the ceiling were too bright for such a run down room. That was the first assessment Kihara Enshuu had when she had found herself waking up in a bed underneath a blanket.

It didn't take much time for her gaze to skitter around the room and catch sight of everything around her after she woke. The room itself had rust marks scattered across the walls, there was nary a window to be seen, and she had caught sight of her usual devices sitting on a dresser by the door. Meanwhile, the blanket she had been under was surprisingly clean, even if some dust and stains seemed to be present in scarcity. To put it bluntly, it was all odd.

As she regained sensation of her body, she had realized that despite being on a bed, she was completely unrestrained. It truly was odd.

"I see you've finally awoken, Sleeping Beauty." But, what lay in stark contrast with this run-down room was the girl who was sitting by her bed. As she sat there with a plate of apple slices, her nearly immaculate form and a gentle smile befitting a mother pulsed through like a ray of sunshine in breaking through the night or a diamond in a garbage heap.

"Would you like some?" The girl held out the plate to Enshuu who was still laying in bed. There was really no more point in pretending to sleep or staying supine in the bed, so she forced her upper body up and looked eye to eye with the girl before her.

It was ridiculous. Had Enshuu been anyone else, she would've been disgusted at just how many openings this girl had. Did she not have any sense of danger for dealing with a Kihara? Beyond that, it was like she had brought every single guard down. It was so ridiculous that she hadn't even noticed her hand slowly reaching for one of those apple slices, which on close inspection had its peels cut to look like bunny ears.

 _!_

With a jerk, she pulled her hand back and hid it behind her back. Her eyes widened and her body seemed to be breaking out into a cold sweat as soon as she realized just how easily she had allowed the captor to take the lead.

"There's no need to be cautious, Enshuu. Though..." The girl floated the plate onto Enshuu's lap before letting go. Placing her index finger on her lips, she turned her head away from Enshuu to look up towards the wall further away from her before returning her gaze to its original position. "I guess it's only natural for a Kihara to act this cautious."

As she doubled down on that smile, she held her now empty hands out in front of her. "In that case, let's talk for a bit."

* * *

 **3**

They had been utterly defeated. Despite not having more than a few scratches on them, Kuroyoru, Kamijou, and Kumokawa knew that they had been completely crushed. It wasn't a matter of injury after all. Both physically and emotionally, they had been utterly defeated. They had failed to prevent Enshuu from being taken.

"DAMN IT!"

Kamijou struggled to restrain himself from punching a wall as they stood under the remaining parts of ceiling in the building they had fought the delinquents in. While the debris from the earlier onslaught remained, the people who had been laying unconscious before them had left. Not a single delinquent was left. Given that the three of them had all seemed to have waken up underneath the same roof, in completely different locations than they were in when they had all went under, Kamijou could only surmise that the delinquents woke up before them.

But, thanks to that, even that connection was completely lost to them.

Without Enshuu or the delinquents, all links to the self-proclaimed mastermind had been completely cut off. They could do naught but start from scratch if they wanted to proceed, but what would be the point if the objective were ultimately muddled and unclear? After all, there was no angle from which they could tackle this scenario anymore.

Through Enshuu? She had ultimately come to Kamijou and Kumokawa by pure coincidence.

Through the mastermind? She had made sure to leave not even a scant trail for them as her appearance could only be denoted as transient.

Through the Skill-Outs? They had done the same as the mastermind in the riding suit.

To sum it all up, Kamijou Touma had no lead and was ultimately frustrated to no end.

"Get a grip, you idiot." The cold, biting voice of that young girl in black cut into Kamijou's conscious as his mind threatened to wall itself off from lack of possibilities. Unlike the boy, she had sifted through a wider range of possibilities. But, she kept her body facing away from Kamijou as she pinched the bridge of her nose and furrowed her brow. Much like him, she was not coming up upon any leads. "There's got to be something we can use. Nobody leaves without some sort of trail."

Despite her adamant refusal, her mind drew a blank. Even things like shells from the shots were likely disposed of, recovered, or destroyed so there was no way to track her.

"What about more indirect methods to track them?" In contrast to the two, the young maid-in-training seemed to be maintaining a calm demeanor as she leaned against a wall and made a simple suggestion. "We may not be able to find any physical evidence, but you can obviously find things like a flow of cash if you track based on a resource or some sort of common connection."

The two stared at Maria with a notable pause and a shocked stare.

"What?"

"Is...this a normal thought process for a maid-in-training?" Kamijou gulped as his mind drifted back to a certain royal maid who he had the misfortune of facing only recently.

"Look. I'll just say that you don't know what lengths I went through to track Kagun to Baggage City, okay?"

"Maids are scary."

"Really scary."

The gap between reality and fantasy was truly a terrifying thing.

"Oi, normally, I'd be okay with my pride being torn apart by your stares but don't we have something else to focus on?"

"Right, right. Would investigating Skill-Out work?" Kamijou, thinking through each resource they had seen began with the very first one.

"Considering the group we encountered was likely a splinter group, there's no guarantee that we'll be able to track them without trying to gather information from Skill-Out themselves, and that's..." Kuroyoru, however, could tell that the lead was more trouble than it was worth.

"Not likely, right?"

"Even though the organization has one name, it's split into multiple independent groups. Acting as one solid group even within a single district like what they were trying to do at the start of October tends to be a rarity so I doubt they'd even realize that one group of their own was acting separately from them."

"That's a bust, huh..." Kamijou sighed, realizing that the hope that Maria had cultivated had begun to dissipate.

"And the FIVE_OVER is a complete dead end too." Kuroyoru gritted her teeth and dug her nails into her scalp as they returned full circle.

"The powered suit she was using?" Maria spoke as Kamijou remained silent.

"That thing is generally meant for use by suppression forces. It's why they were sent into Denmark. While some of the people in the city's underbelly have methods of attaining one, I lost any link to a possible supplier when I lost Silvercross Alpha. Anyone we have connections to that could attain one is either dead, incapacitated, or in hiding."

"Wait..." It was as if something had clicked. "We still have an avenue to track the FIVE_OVER."

"If you're thinking of the Rensa hypothalami, that's unlikely to work."

"No, not them."

In retrospect, he was surprised he didn't bring up the connection sooner. He had only encountered this person during his hospitalization, using the FIVE_OVER for that something or other Level 5.

"Mitsuari Ayu."

* * *

 **4**

While Accelerator was one who seemed to embody the concept of destruction, it wasn't a reputation he was particularly happy for. When one is generally defined to some extent as destruction incarnate, that reality often tends to get in the way. Unfortunately, that reality ended up holding true for the last four targets.

Though, at least, much like the first truck, the result seemed to not directly be his doing.

That being said, he was hardly the kind of person who would learn nothing from his mistakes. One would think that he should have used a different tact from the start, but the now hooded boy was fully aware that there was something more important that functioned as a prerequisite for changing tactics.

From his position on the other side of the street, his eyes trailed over the truck, stopping at certain points before moving to the next one. Once he had stopped four times, he took a deep breath and quickly activated a choker before rapid firing small pellets of metal one by one at each of those nodes he had paused on. Each and every one hit a specific mark, tearing apart numerous wires without incident, the sound of collisions dampened underneath the pitter-patter of the falling rain.

With another click, silence reigned on that street. Despite the quick and damaging actions, neither explosions or sparks threatened to mar that peaceful emptiness of that road.

Without skipping a beat, he trod upon that road until he got to the back doors of the container. Transferring his weight upon his cane, he flicked open the latch on the bottom and pushed up the container's shutter before walking in.

Much like before, the shutters fell back down to the ground behind him. The boy reflexively brought his hand to his choker once again, expecting a repeat. However…

"Seems like I hit the nail on the head." The boy smiled as his hand fell down from to his side. He had effectively done it. It was a bit of a crude solution, but he cut off the power to any of the detonators. He had finally brought himself some free information. After all, those screens in the truck were scrolling rows and rows of data continuously.

"Now, then..." From his pocket he pulled out a phone, the data terminal, and a pair of cables.

"You called yourself errors, didn't you?" One could almost call his voice a bit sing-song in that moment, though it would probably be best not to. "Let's start debugging, then."

* * *

 **5**

"I'm sorry about that display." It had taken an intimidating guard coming in and giving a menacing glare, but Mitsuari Ayu had finally calmed down and taken her seat across from Kamijou, holding fast to her bright blush while running her hands across her hair and outfit to straighten it all out. Even in this kind of situation, she could not help but keep up appearances. Even after all the time she had been away from the light, she could never truly toss away that Tokiwadai-quality demeanor.

Though, if she had to be glad for anything, she was truly glad this boy had some level of density towards him in this moment. Unfortunately—

"Hoooo~ I'm impressed."

"What is it with these damn hero types and attraction?"

No, she was still glad that boy was pretty damn dense. He was no black hole, but she could happily wave away her embarrassment and he would be none the wiser, even if his two companions were, much to her relief.

"Have you been doing okay since yesterday, Mitsuari?" With that one question, she could honestly feel her embarrassment which had just been at a fever pitch finally plummeting down to a nadir. If she was being perfectly honest, she was completely elated at the fact that the boy had come to visit her, even if that wasn't his priority, as evidenced by his entourage's presence.

Her blush began to fade as the muscles in her face finally relaxed into a smile one could call natural. "Yeah. Given all I'd done in the past year, this is probably the safest location for me right now. There's no telling whose ire I may have drawn after all of that." The girl took a deep sigh. "If it wasn't for Shokuhou's interventions, there's no telling where I could have ended up."

"Shokuhou…?" The boy struggled to put the name to a face, but it ended up in failure. The name sounded familiar, but beyond that, he could hardly muster up any further details.

"Right, you charged in without knowing all the details. So, don't worry too much. Even if you ended up being her hero again, there's no way you'll remember her. For simplicity's sake, it's thanks to the girl in the FIVE_OVER's container that I was able to safely be moved here." Despite having to dumb down the situation, Ayu didn't mind one bit. It was almost nostalgic.

"Oh. That sticky girl."

Ayu's eyes shot wide open as she heard that. She almost wanted to try and make sure Misaki had heard that. Perhaps some of that resentment she held still remained, but she suppressed the incoming laugh to the best of her ability. "If you ever meet her, don't ever describe her like that." She had given out a piece of advice in defense of Shokuhou only to realize that it was ultimately meaningless. "Though, given the nature of your history with her, you probably wouldn't ever know you met her again."

A stark silence remained as Kamijou gave a blank stare to Ayu. She tried opening her mouth, but the proper words just didn't seem to form. Everything ended up ground to a complete halt and the girl was unsure just how to push things forward.

At least, that was the case until the girl with blonde highlights and the scowl could finally feel her scowl hit its upper limit before clenching her fist and landing it straight on the spiky-haired boy's head. "You idiot! Stop sitting there, staring and ask her! We're not here to make idle chatter, dammit!"

"Eh?" As if watching an explosion suddenly occur, Ayu completely froze up as she watched the odd scene before her. Despite being prepared for the reality that they had come to her for a reason beyond a simple visit, she had felt most of her mental guards fall away the moment she saw the fist from the angry young girl.

"Right. Right." The boy winced and rubbed at his now pained head as he tried to regain his bearings from his prior daze. "We need more details on that FIVE_OVER you were using that night."

"The FIVE_OVER..." As those words escaped her lips, her eyes narrowed.

The aggressive one, finally seeing an opportunity, tried to continue the line of questioning. "Specifically, we want to know-"

"Stop." Ayu placed her palm out towards the girl, beckoning silence. "First, I have no idea who you are. I'm only talking to Kamijou-kun, here. Second, this kind of big picture thing really requires a little finesse to go through."

It was at that moment, that something could be heard snapping. "NOW, LISTEN HERE, YOU LITTLE SHIT! YOU'RE THE ONE HERE WHO'S-"

Before the girl could go all out, Kamijou placed his hand in front of the young girl as well, signaling her.

"Hey, don't you dare take her side in all of this."

Unfortunately for Kuroyoru, things were only going to get worse as the maid-in-training broke her silence for a mild chuckle.

"Fine, I know when I'm not needed. Tch." With a click of her tongue and a continued scowl (or was that a pout at that point), she shut her mouth and averted her gaze towards the wall.

 _She seems fun to tease._ Sure that the young girl would no longer try and interject, Ayu let her hand fall back to her side. "I'm going to be running on the assumption that you know nothing. While what you saw yesterday were emblazoned with that name, those two machines were far from complete in terms of the way the _Modelcase_"RAILGUN"_ was. The ones I had were designated as _Modelcase_"MENTAL_OUT"_. One was a machine that used a workaround to create a similar effect and the other was incomplete due to the lack of complete data on the corresponding Level 5."

There was no point in trying to force his memory of Shokuhou. Inevitably, he would forget her if she were to try to refer to the Level 5 by name or physical description.

"In order to complete that data, the subject in question ended up being a necessity."

That was the reason he had been cursed with that inevitable condition to forget the girl in the first place. She made no point in mentioning the Queen Divers or anything surrounding them. After all, that would only muddle his memories.

"What you encountered was one of numerous attempts at that goal that had been ongoing for several years." Despite any anticipations she may have lead on about the length of her spiel, Ayu had been surprisingly concise with it all. Given the delicacy of the topic and what that spiky-haired boy could handle, it was only natural, though.

"For years? Your attempt wasn't the only one?" Kamijou, understanding that she had finally opened the floor to questions, poked at the juiciest bit of information.

"The man behind it all was a scientist named Shundou Toshizou. He had been involved with experiments pertaining to the Number 5 for years going well back into the time before she had become a Level 5. I was only the most recent one. Of course, the FIVE_OVER technology in its current form was only recent—a breakout advance that became feasible for use only after the war acted as a stress test for numerous other inventions like _Equ. DarkMatter_. It ended up being the most appetizing methodology for Shundou reinforced by the performances of weapons in that model line during Baggage City and Agitate Halation."

"Where is he now, then?"

Ayu, however, shook her head in response to that boy's question. "I'm not sure. I've been generally isolated from the outside since I was taken here and even the Number 5 is not really sure if he's still at large. For all we know, he could be dead."

At that moment, Kamijou Touma's eyes seemed to almost glaze over. It was like he was grasping for a lifeline, only to find that it was never there.

"What about back-up plans? From the sounds of it, he likely had to start from scratch numerous times. Were you aware of any back-up plans he had in case you failed? Ones that would involve use of the FIVE_OVERs?" But, the one who broke that silence brought on by that crawling despair was the maid-in-training.

"Of course he did. That old man had been reeling from failure after failure since the days of IDEAL. Given how prime of a methodology they became for him when using me, he started furnishing a back-up plan with a wider range of machines towards the end."

"But why Enshuu, then?" Despite all the talk of the incident surrounding the two mental espers, Kamijou could not let go of that one nagging question. Shundou had labored to create a working model of the Number 5's ability, illuminating that black box. In that case, why would they even need Enshuu? It was hardly like Enshuu could emulate the Level 5's ability. She was capable of emulating personalities and styles, but never the unique abilities pertaining to their AIM Diffusion Fields.

"Let's not dwell too much into that. There's no guarantee this is even the group we're chasing." Kuroyoru, finally over her embarrassment, spoke up. "If we want to rescue Enshuu, we'll need to go step-by-step. Otherwise, we'll end up on a wild goose chase and waste our last trail."

It was all a bit overwhelming, but Kuroyoru was right. There was no point in fretting over the big picture yet when they had barely even scratched the surface if even that. They just needed to take things with a measure of caution and work on each increment until they found what they needed. "What was this group like?"

"I have no idea."

"Eh?" The three stared blankly at Ayu as she once again shut down their route with a single sentence.

"Don't give me that look! I'd been siphoning off data from Shundou but I never perused the entirety of it. I was working off a personal grudge, okay? I was a bit tunnel visioned." The girl waved her hands in front of her, trying to divert the steam of embarrassment from her current useless state. "But, I don't think he cared that I had full access to all of his data. He was probably fully aware of my own tunnel vision."

"Wait. Do you still have access..." Kamijou's voice tapered off as the answer would obviously be no.

Ayu simply sighed before covering her mouth with her hand and giving a slight chuckle. Truly, she could never be rid of that Tokiwadai ojou-sama demeanor. "There's a warehouse, named Ideal Image, slightly north of the School Garden that I used as a base of operations and a storage facility for materials. I had access to all of the data I needed from there. Passcode for the entryway is 0714 and the password for the computer I kept inside was Anthill_Summer."

She sifted her hand through the end of her marshmallow hair and began twirling the end of it as she spoke. It was hardly like she had her reservations about giving away that information so easily. She had never laid bare the details about IDEAL to Kamijou in the past. It was in no way a savory portion of her life. Yet, somehow, she could still smile with levity, knowing the possibilities of what she would be revealing about herself.

"Just promise me one thing in exchange for all of this, though, Kamijou."

"Hmm?" With that quick request, Kamijou let out a confused grunt that seemed to encompass exactly how he felt about what he had just heard.

 _I'm making demands even though I've already given away my leverage. I really am a selfish girl._

"When you're done being the hero for this new girl and walk out of it all with a smiling face like you always do, promise you'll come and visit again." She pressed her hands together, as if trying to tent her hands and kept her smile going. "It gets quite lonely in here."

Perhaps, that was all he needed to hear. When it came down to it, the complicated matters that seemed to mire that girl's past were meaningless. He could reflect that girl's smile without a single hint of hesitation. "Of course."

* * *

 **6**

Despite how calm she remained in the past few minutes, it all seemed to come crashing down the moment Kamijou Touma and his entourage had left the visitation area. The blush that she had once suppressed to an iota had been flourishing once again as she stayed perfectly still on that chair and panted heavily. Given her current state, Mitsuari Ayu had honestly wondered exactly how she had been able to maintain such an innocent face towards that boy ever since he made that promise.

 _Just calm down, Ayu! Soon, the guard will fetch you and you can replay this moment in your head over and over till the next time she comes._

Ah, the true power of fixation that a girl hopelessly in love held was blinding.

So blinding, she couldn't even see the guard come in.

…

 _Actually, where is that guard?_ With her focus finally taken off of Kamijou Touma, she looked back to the door she had entered from but not a single soul seemed to pass through it.

"Excuse me. Aren't you supposed to escort me back to my cell?" She called out to the guard, hoping he'd hear from behind the door.

"You have one more visitor here to see you." The voice of that guard boomed through that lone speaker that was on the wall near the door.

 _Another visitor? Could it be Shokuhou this time? No...she would've tried to say something to Kamijou...or at least I'd've heard some hint of her at this point._

The girl's brain once again roamed through the possibilities of who it could possibly be. She may have even completely forgotten about her intentions to apologize. But, as she ran through the numerous possibilities with the fervor of a paranoiac, the door finally cracked open. First came the familiar loafers worn by Tokiwadai students, stepping into the visitor's side. Next came that familiar Tokiwadai uniform. As her gaze slowly floated up, she caught sight of the new entry.

However, she didn't blush or go into the same frenzy she had fallen into earlier.

Instead, she grimaced.

Ayu's hopeful gaze had been swapped out for one of pure regret as she tried to keep from looking at her eyes.

"Why…are you..."

"It's been a long time, Mitsuari-san." The new entry simply greeted Ayu as her voice had tapered off. If Kamijou had stayed just a bit longer, he would have found some solace in that voice and demeanor that truly matched the common perception of an ojou-sama—one that was in stark contrast to the so-called ojou-samas he knew from Tokiwadai.

* * *

 **7**

It all started with a conversation. When the first boulder starts rolling down the hill, frantic chaos is the inevitable result.

* * *

 **Interlude**

None of us had asked for this. That was the inevitable sentiment among all of us for when everything finally smashed head-first into rock-bottom.

Each and every one of us had taken different paths.

Walked across different fields.

Received different farcically sweet words.

Attained different levels as espers.

But, we all had one commonality linking us together, despite that spectrum of histories.

"Where did we go wrong? Was it all our fault?"

Looking back, though I'm sure nobody would have blamed us, those lingering questions remained with each and every one of us. After all, the formal name that was left to each and every one of us was Errors.

In the end, we had been filed down to nothing more than marmots.

Disposable subjects.

Stripped of all in….

...

That was why.

Despite those stains of blood on her as she removed our shackles one-by-one. As she brought each of us salvation with just one line. As she gave us something to fill in that which we had all lost. Our in…

...

Yes. One could almost mistake her for our sun.

* * *

 **A/N: With that, Chapter 4 is finally done. It took longer than necessary, but c'est la vie, unfortunately. Life tends to drown out all time to write and that gets annoying and old quickly.**

 **That being said, we've started the second act of this fic. One of those odd things I've noted is how much ideas evolve from their initial conception. Originally, I had meant Ayu to have only the scenes with her and Touma from this chapter, but plans have changed and she'll have her own character arc that's intimately intertwined with the rest of the story. I don't know, but that girl just somehow how manages to sneak her way into my writing way too much. Not that I'm really complaining.**

 **I do have to wonder if I made the identity of her second visitor too obvious. Given the description, there is only one possible character who it could be.**

 **Do not worry though. All conversations that had been truncated in this chapter will be given spotlight in the coming chapters.**

 **On the other hand, I've been trying to shape Kizuna up to be a different sort of villain. While we know generally how the dark side of the city functions through its interactions with the rest of the cast, I thought to try and build her up to be slightly different from the type of characters we've seen before-one that may clash with people's conceptions of the dark side.**

 **It's time for the boulder to begin rolling downward. Come what may, be it NT22 or whatever craziness I come up with, I hope we can all enjoy this together.**

 **But, till next time, I'll set my pen down and pick back up those histology slides. A quick thanks to MrQuestionMark for the Beta reading.**

 **A girl's three sizes are a very personal thing, Guest Reviewer. One must not tread lightly on such details, even if they may in fact arise later.**


	6. Chapter 05

**Chapter 05**

 **Initiation of a Confluent Chaos.**

 _ **Sisyphus's_Climb.**_

 **1**

"Hyouka!"

Just as suddenly as she had vanished, she reappeared. Whether she had willed herself back into this phase or whether it was just following how the world flowed, Kazakiri Hyouka was absolutely certain of that familiar place the moment her dear friend's call had reached her ears.

"Is...something wrong, Hyouka?"

"You look like you saw a demon."

"Huh?" Maybe it was because she had gotten used to it, but she realized her body had tensed up. She may have even been giving a heavy glare. She had wiped her tears and stood back up not too long ago so she hadn't noticed. Looking down, she held out her arms, clenching and unclenching her fists before her eyes until she finally took a deep exhale and let her body finally relax.

"I'm not sure..."

If she was being completely honest, she couldn't say she was able to comprehend what had happened in those moments when she had slipped between the phases. Despite being the key to the _i_ th District, she couldn't say she understood how it really worked.

"I'm not sure what's going on at all."

But the big question, when all was said and done, was 'how did he even get in?'

The _i_ th District wasn't exactly a place one would ever expect to find a normal-seeming human being. And yet…

"Something's not right."

"What is it Hyouka?" Her concerned friend asked.

"Something encroached onto the _i_ th District."

Despite being friends, Index could hardly say she understood what the _i_ th District really was. The term was still, but a vague and abstract concept that held no meaning to her beyond the superficial definition of Kazakiri Hyouka's home.

All she could really do was tilt her head in confusion.

"Is that even possible? I thought that district was supposed to be a conglomeration of Esper powers." The magic god, who had some form of understanding of the workings of Esper powers due to Gremlin's experiments, brought up the obvious question.

"It shouldn't be. AIM Fields, even from a level 5, aren't strong enough to create an individual presence in that space. They would be drowned out by the individuality of the hundreds of thousands of AIM Fields that constructed it."

Beyond that, the _i_ th District could almost be seen as one of the many phases that envelop the world like heaven, Asgard, or Yomi. Breaking into that kind of existence would be unprecedented as far as the three of them knew.

"What about a way to trace the intrusion?"

Hyouka just shook her head. She was hardly an administrator to that phase. Even if she was the axis or origin about which the _i_ th District shifted around, she had zero knowledge on how to read in-depth into that world's workings. In many ways, she was like a user or a crucial program rather than someone with administrator's privileges.

Though, the people around her would probably have berated her for using such a comparison.

The people around her…

"We need to reunite with Kamijou-kun."

"The human?" Othinus wanted to almost chide the girl for taking an interlude to declare that they should do what they had already been doing, but now was not the time. Neither she nor Index held any sort of potency that could help with this situation.

But, there was still the chance that they could work something out together. Besides, it would be remiss of her to avoid him after he offered one too many times to be there as her friend.

"Alright. We'll find Touma and figure this out together!" The clueless nun puffed out her chest. Though she may not have understood the intricacies behind Hyouka's problem, she could be damn certain that her friend needed help and that was all that mattered to her.

And though that may not have fixed the problem at all, it was enough to make Kazakiri Hyouka smile in the face of trouble.

That was all they needed as the walked back out into that rainy evening.

* * *

 **2**

While Accelerator could say that he was good at perusing through large swathes of data, numbers on their own were meaningless if he was not the one to make those measurements. That is to say, the numbers flashing on the screen before him were meaningless.

As interesting as it could have been to fiddle with these numerous matrices displaying themselves, it would ultimately be a futile display.

So, he discarded that thought from the start.

Instead…

A click sounded as that he clicked his electrode and slammed his hands onto the monitor.

 _Where is it?_

His mind immediately skipped past the data as he examined raw vectors within those currents.

 _Where is the transducer?_

As his mind traversed across the inner circuitry, passing by the various amplifiers, inductors, capacitors, and resistors, he continued searching for that one element supplying the information displayed on the screen.

And behind the filters—

 _There it is!_

Without wasting even a second, he walked away and tore into a nearby panel, tearing it out and revealing a metal cylinder with a minutely rattling shaft standing at what looked to be the start of a circuit.

Placing his hand on the board, he immediately started monitoring the electric field surrounding the proximal wiring.

 _Monitor the flux._

 _Differentiate with respect to time._

 _Create a consolidated process._

 _Account for the band pass._

With how quickly he was acting, the process seemed almost automatic. Each individual process was accumulated together into what could be called a program of its own right. Even with the handicap that brain damage had brought him, he was still the Number 1 for a reason. His calculative prowess was still second to none.

With the transducer's values isolated, it was simply a matter of trial, comparison, error, and elimination.

He ran down each of the first few measurements he could think of—particulate matter concentration, air flow, temperature, and electric signal measurements all turned up negative.

Not a single one properly matched up with the current patterns.

Air flow.

Air pressure.

Air composition values.

Radiation.

"Shit..."

He could feel his head throbbing as he was running out of possible values to measure. After all, it wasn't like this was measuring human something on a human being. It was a transducer measuring some value. Without some kind of hint, there would be no way to narrow down or even test any hypotheses.

Despite having found an avenue for information he was once again at a dead end.

Reversing vectors in that circuit to experiment could possibly end up burning out the transducer.

Turning his eyes away from the circuit boards, he gazed back upon the numbers on the screen again. There had to be a hint somewhere in those matrices. If it wasn't in the circuit, it was in that ridiculous accumulation of data.

As his hand pulled away from the circuit and shut off his collar's esper mode, an odd change propagated across numerous numbers on that data set—a complete valley in certain values.

Yet, the only difference was—

With the flick of his finger he reactivated esper mode. Surely enough, the values increased in response.

"I see..."

Turning off the button, he re-extended his cane and looked back towards those numbers go in the direction he expected.

"AIM Diffusion Fields. That's what those fuckers are measuring."

It was a start. While he admittedly had no idea what the self-proclaimed 'errors' were after, he could finally start narrowing down their goals.

That being said, there was one thing that was clear. If their objective was connected to the AIM Diffusion Fields scattered around the city, then it affected a grander scale than they had cared to admit to him prior.

"It's like that bastard Kihara-kun all over again."

Even if the scale may be smaller than his estimates, there was zero guarantees that this incident would leave that brat unscathed. No, because whatever they were doing, it would likely put some stress on that brat.

"If it isn't one thing, it's fucking another." With a click of his tongue, he forced his way to a nearby keypad and started typing, causing a command window to pop up in front of the data. "In that case, let's track where you're going and hit you at your source."

There was no more need for subtlety. There was no more need to tiptoe and seek out some form of context or motive. He was not some hero who needed any of that sentimental nonsense. A certain thought being would probably berate him for taking the easy way out, but he would much rather quietly protect that world he had built up and return to it without a word than risk it for someone else who would be trampling on that.

"Fuck that."

As if on cue, a creaking sound came from above him. The roof of the vehicle began to dent inwards as the impression of numerous rectangles made themselves visible. It didn't take long. Possibly just an instant.

Numerous shells pieced through, raining down upon the Number 1.

* * *

 **3**

"He's running a bit late, isn't he?" Those eerily familiar words came out of the mouth of that (not-so-)young ex-scientist by the name of Yoshikawa Kikyou, directed straight towards nobody in particular. Despite those words, there didn't seem to be a hint of urgency in her voice. Yoshikawa was, for all intents and purposes, a practical woman. It was something that had permeated to numerous other facets of her personality, much to her dismay, given the mistakes she had made because of it.

One could wonder if her mild apathy was a result of her practical attempts to give Accelerator as much room to maneuver as possible. One could also call that a sort of mother-like attitude though she would show abject denial.

Though, that didn't seem to matter as she overlooked two similar-looking girls with their eyes glued to their screens in front of them and their hands pounding away at controllers.

"This Misaka posits the likelihood that he finally awakened to his adolescent urges and found a girl."

"He would never, says Misaka as Misaka goes in for a finishing special!" The younger-looking girl's character immediately went into a short animation lock before throwing a wide attack that covered a majority of the screen.

"Kehehe~" But, it seemed to give the older-looking girl no pause as her avatar popped up, facing the now exposed back of the one releasing a flashy move. Like a predator with its prey in its sights, the avatar pounced upon the younger-looking one's without even a second's delay from the end of the I-frames.

And that was all she wrote.

"Misaka wins! Take that, control tower!"

The one standing up and celebrating with nothing more than the aura of a sore winner was Misaka Worst. Despite her mature appearance accentuated by the ao dai she donned, she was actually the younger one—an always shining beacon of malice from the recesses of the Misaka Network. One could call her an entity of pure resentment, but that would be selling short everything she came to represent and bank her identity on.

The one hanging her head in defeat was the paradoxically older one—Last Order, the 'control tower' for the Misaka Network.

"Yes, yes. I'm sure you're reveling in this, but can you cut your euphoria short and go find our lost little boy, Worst?" Yoshikawa, seeing as their little battle had come to an end,

"Wait, exclaims Misaka as Misaka jumps up from her stupor! Why can't you let Misaka go instead, asks Misaka as Misaka's eyes get overtaken by stars!"

"For starters, you're the smaller one here." The older woman got down on one knee and placed a hand on Last Order's shoulder before looking her in the eye. It was pretty obvious that Yoshikawa, be it through some obsession in the past or through her own experiences taking care of Last Order, had come to understand certain 'proper' ways of talking to children.

"That's right." Crossing her arms, Worst nodded in agreement with Yoshikawa.

"It would be safer to send out Worst to look for him since she's more able-bodied and stronger."

"Exactly. This Misaka couldn't have said it better herself." Though Last Order couldn't see Worst's expression, she could tell that the malicious existence in the network was donning an ever-widening grin. In contrast, Last Order could only find herself pouting progressively with each interjection.

"We'll just wait for them together here and if there are any issues, we'll go ourselves after a while. Sound fair?"

It was at times like this where Yoshikawa's pragmatism shined so much that it overwhelmed any childish desire to talk back. Maybe she really was an apt mother.

"Fine, acquiesces Misaka as Misaka maintains her pout."

"That's a good girl." With a smile, Yoshikawa patted the young girl's head.

"In that case, this Misaka will go out, find the albino boy, and continue her mission to break him apart from the control tower. A little debauchery is in order~"  
"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Last Order made a sharp turn and screamed, only to find herself locked in place by two larger arms from behind before she could make a run.

"Smell ya later~ Ahahahaha~" Without a hint of resistance, the taller girl ran off, leaving her laugh to fade with distance.

"Let me at her, shouts Misaka as Misaka keeps pulling towards the door."

Though it was hardly a difficult task to keep Last Order, Yoshikawa found herself unsure of what to do to calm her down. Even stating the obvious fact that Worst's little mission hadn't yielded any fruit in the past month could possibly make things worse.

As much as she may have denied it, Yoshikawa Kikyou was truly standing in a mother's shoes.

* * *

 **4**

No matter how anyone sliced it, the three of them were an odd group that was all too conspicuous. While the normal high school boy one could find anywhere found it easy to blend into a crowd of normal people, his companions were not so fortunate in that regard. One was a maid-in-training whose flashy bee-colored uniform would look more at home in a maid cafe in Akihabara while the other was a girl in black with a resting bitch face and a glare that could pierce for miles.

Unfortunately for Kamijou Touma, the sheer contrast with those two made him stand out with them as well.

There was no guarantee that they weren't being watched considering their prior proximity to Enshuu and their general resistance against the puppet master's requests. Given that she had preferred to use others to do her dirty work and acted quickly when she had to enter the stage, it was likely that whoever had taken Enshuu didn't want to put herself in the public eye.

In that case, how they needed to proceed was fairly obvious. Move through a crowd to their next location and go through a location where attacking would draw unnecessary attention.

"Wait, that's your logic behind using the underground mall?!" Unfortunately, despite the fact that they were already going through with this plan of action, the youngest and most vulgar of the group could throw out naught but a vehement objection as she walked by his side. "Okay, you might not know about this, but I had Silvercross Alpha try to kidnap Fremea Sievelun here. With a fucking Powered Suit. In this same underground mall. Not to mention the numerous attacks here during the months leading up to World War III."

"I'm fully aware. I was involved in one of them, myself." Touma spat out, remembering the incident from the first day of September. "But, it's either that or going overground. Thanks to the weather, the amount of people outside will be sparse and areas where people are spread too thinly or transportation would make us sitting ducks. Not to mention that dealing with all of this in the middle of the rain is a bad idea."

"You're missing the point here, you moron. Crowds and low ceilings are not ambush-proof. If anything, they'll create more of an obstacle for us if they did ambush."

"Not necessarily." Maria cut in before Kuroyoru could allow herself to get another word. "I think I get why he's so fixated on keeping within a crowd. When they came for Enshuu, the Skill-Outs they pulled in explicitly made it so that any actions they did took place out of sight."

"That's about it. Everything they did took place in an alleyway out of the eyes of the normal person...at least, if they weren't looking for anything. I'm guessing there was likely some order made by the girl in the suit to keep everything away from wandering eyes. If so, they'll likely maintain that level of secrecy until they've progressed far enough in whatever they're doing to break that necessity. It'll likely be a turning point for them so we can use how brazen they become in order to gauge them. Of course, it could also just be a sign that we're getting too close to them for their comfort as well."

Kuroyoru was almost dumbfounded. She had always expected this boy to act as some sort of immaculate hero, especially given how she saw him act in Hawaii and the whole Agitate Halation debacle, but the fact still remained that he was using unrelated bystanders as a measuring tool. While effective, it was something she couldn't help but label as the cold and logical actions akin to the world she lived in.

"Besides, if they do attack, the three of us could probably come up with some way to disperse the bystanders and keep them out of harms way."

"I'm not sure whether I should call you crazy or an idiot." Kuroyoru spat out, maintaining her scowl.

"I've heard both." Despite being insulted quite handily, the boy chuckled, letting it all bounce off him. After all, it was hardly the first time he had heard either.

"Of course you would." Resigning herself to reality, Kuroyoru sighed and relented. "How much time will it take to get there."

"It will probably take another 20 minutes to get to the right exit and a further 10 to get to the warehouse." It was hardly efficient to wade through crowds of students enjoying night time leisure, but given the lack of cross walks and the inclement weather, the three of them had taken the fastest route. It was only natural. They had no idea what was happening to Enshuu so time was of the essence. Even if it was as late as 21:00, there was no point in waiting around.

"What a farce."

If she hadn't been involved with the maid and the idiot, she could likely have found herself utilizing one of the city's many 'garbage trucks' as transport. But, that would not suffice in this situation.

So, she would have to deal with it. That was reality.

"Has it been tough?"

"Eh?" Kuroyoru, confused, faced Kamijou Touma as he asked a question that came out of nowhere.

"Since the Agitate Halation incident, I mean. I haven't seen you since I got discharged from the hospital."

"This isn't the time for—"

"Calm down. We don't know who could be watching. We need to blend into the crowd as much as possible." Maria, facing Kuroyoru with a professional smile on her face, interjected before she could finish her rebuke.

She maintained a defiant scowl to the best of her ability. After all, casual talk would only be an impedance in such a rushed situation.

"Things've gone to shit."

"Eh?" Even though she had relented, that was hardly the answer Kamijou expected from her.

"The Freshmen were an organization that was manipulated by Yakumi Hisako for the sake of her shitty plans. When Accelerator cut us all free at the end of World War III, he never tied up the loose ends or thought too deep into the implications for those of us who see that part of Academy City as a home. Ultimately, that's why I thought we had formed. So, we could live in that world of carnage."

The girl lifted her arm up before her eyes, clenching and unclenching her fist as she let out a wistful gaze.

"But thanks to Hisako, we're a shadow of our former selves. After all, we were meant to be disposable pawns whose purpose was to die at her whims. We've had nothing but low-grade jobs after being thrust to the bottom rung then...until this one, at least. I wondered...was this all the right decision?"

Kuroyoru Umidori was someone who had been implanted with the Number 1's thought patterns. Even before she had taken part in Dark May, she was the type of person with a heavy rebellious streak. Whether she liked it or not, that tendency towards violence—towards drowning herself in blood—was something that was an intimate part of her.

But, that was not necessarily a hard and fast rule.

Though she was loath to admit it, there was Kinuhata Saiai.

Though she still reeked of the world she had been mired in, Kinuhata Saiai had still found a home for herself outside of that carnage. She had climbed out of the murk and lived on.

Yet, Kuroyoru could do nothing more than sink and survive. She had been defeated when the Freshmen had made their first move. She had been utterly destroyed by that cyborg called Rensa during the Agitate Halation.

And the world had simply left her behind.

The Number 1 and that shitty honors student Kinuhata had all changed with the world.

So, where did that leave her?

"And where do I go from here on?"

"I can't say for certain."

"Eh?" In a turnabout of sorts, Kamijou's words drew out confusion from her.

"I'm not sure if you were looking for approval or rejection, but it's not like I'm someone who's fit to cast that judgment on you. Whether your path was the right one to take is something only you can decide."

At first glance, it may have looked like the boy was just pushing any responsibility for giving an answer away.

"But, if it was down to me, I think the life you lead is a sad one." The boy turned to give a solemn gaze towards the younger girl. "Regardless of whether your decisions were right or wrong."

"Dammit. I should've known better than to open myself up to you. You hero types are all the same. Even when you're half-assing your words."

As they walked down that empty mall pathway, she found herself chuckling. It was all stupid. Opening herself up to that hero whose existence could make her vomit. His words in response. It was all stupid.

"Well, you have your whole life ahead of you. We've all hardly even lived two decades, so it may be pointless to start thinking on stuff like that, but I can't fault you for it."

There was no way he could. Regardless of what side of the spectrum he fell on, it was hardly like he, too, didn't do it as well. He had fallen through a nearly endless hell and climbed back because of it all.

"But, if you want to, I can still stand by your side and support you."

"Huh?!" Kuroyoru could feel her face contorting in response. It seemed there was not a single ounce of her that wanted to accept those words. "Are you listening to yourself? Support me? What are you even thinking?"

"Well, I don't usually think of forging bonds in the heat of battle—I'm a normal high school student after all—but, we've fought together before. I'd like to think that's enough, don't you think?"

Though, it may not have seemed that way, sometimes extending the olive branch was all that was necessary.

"It's not a particularly easy thing to do, but I'll support you until you can find that answer yourself." Or in this case, a clenched right fist leisurely extended towards Kuroyoru.

"You're a real idiot, you know that?" Despite her words and her attempt to avert her gaze from the boy, she raised her own fist to tap at his.

"And a natural-born gigolo too, huh?" Maria muttered, watching the two come to some odd sort of understanding. Though, given all that had happened, perhaps it was for the better that the mood had been given some unfettered levity.

Perhaps a bit too unfettered and vulnerable.

* * *

 **5**

"Took you fuckers long enough."

Underneath the blanket of rain on that public road, two figures stood.

"Did my probing around finally hit a nerve?"

Standing on top of what was now a crushed and heavily perforated trailer for a truck was a single Powered Suit: the one known as the FIVE_Over Modelcase_"RAILGUN". On the side of what used to be a wall was a large hole that looked like it had been forced open from within, in contrast to the tiny holes that came from without.

Opposing the machine was the demon in white, Accelerator. Despite the original onslaught, he had come out of it all completely unscathed. It didn't take too much imagination for him to turn his choker back to Esper mode and blow a hole with the shells that had been aimed at him.

"Though she doesn't want to involve you, I'm not a real fan of letting someone trample upon what we've worked on."

The suit pointed its gatling railguns towards the Number One without hesitation.

"Though we may have you to thank for breaking our chains, your work was sloppy. Though she may be ready to proceed to the next phase, we can't throw away our sentimentality or our grudges. So, just die."

There were no further words that needed to be spoken. Numerous shots in an instant crashed into ground around as a fifty times as many shards of asphalt flew into the air at various angles and heights.

As Accelerator merely stood there and watched, they all fell.

No, that would be too inaccurate. Each and every one of them changed course ten by ten, sometimes twenty by twenty. From whatever direction they had flew off in, those pieces looked as if they had been slapped back by some invisible force, straight towards the Number 1.

But, his face never once showed any worry. As those pieces flew straight towards him, he smiled, watching each and every one of them in eyesight being reflected by his passive barrier. Some falling down towards earth, and some flying straight back up and out.

Regardless, those pieces could never touch Accelerator and as they flew back up, they were once again slapped back down.

It was comparable to a match of table tennis on an absurd scale.

"Is that really all you have to offer? Did you really think you could overwhelm me with this?"

In theory, the concept wasn't entirely wrong. If his brain was forced to do enough calculations, his ability could be overwhelmed in a way to overwhelming a computer's CPU and random access memory.

But, it wasn't enough.

The suit's pilot didn't even respond as Accelerator changed his strategy and aimed a few of those pieces of asphalt straight at the FIVE_OVER.

But, like the many others he had reflected away, they simply changed course as if something had volleyed them back.

"Tch."

Things were clearly starting to become more of a pain to deal with. It was all stupid. So, following a click of his tongue, Accelerator propelled himself forward, reaching his arm out towards the FIVE_OVER. He would simply crush it with his bare hands.

So, his hand sunk in...and stopped. Whatever his hand had buried itself in was neither the guts of a human being nor sheets of metal. It was granular. Sweeping his hand toward his side, he finally revealed, to some extent what he had seen. The image of the powered suit looked like it had a large chunk of grains flung out of it, as if a child dug their hand towards wet sand on the beach.

And underneath it all was—

 _!_

Accelerator felt his body and mind freeze for just an instant, but that instant was enough for a single piece of asphalt to graze right across his face, leaving a trail of blood on that cut it had created.

In a cold sweat, he jumped back immediately to his initial position and looked towards the side down the road.

Suppressing the memory of what he had just viewed, he raised his arm and slammed it into the asphalt in front of him before closing his eyes. As the asphalt of the road split apart, a similar phenomenon had occurred.

But, that didn't matter.

Something was wrong and he had to move.

He kicked off and crashed through a what felt like a sandy wall and pushed straight down the road.

But, he wasn't out of the clear just yet. He needed to start his counterattack as whatever had been there was now chasing him.

The phantom of Medusa fast approached.

And the vision of that sclera and iris burned into his memory.

* * *

 **Interlude 05**

She had tossed it all away.

Status, clout, and past relationships—she had given up on all of it.

So, it was inevitable that she would be surprised. Mitsuari Ayu never dreamed that she would ever see her again.

"Hokaze-san..."

Mitsuari Ayu could only avert her eyes as she attempted to avoid gazing upon the form of the girl before her. She was the 2nd in command of Tokiwadai's most infamous clique—a girl whose name was almost as ubiquitous in that school as the girl who she acted subordinate to. She was a girl whose platinum-blonde hair was styled into an iconic set of vertical rolls. Her grace and elegance with every step perfectly befit the reputation of the prestigious middle school. And she was someone who had shared time with Ayu during the days of IDEAL.

She was Hokaze Junko.

"It has been a while, Mitsuari-san."

Even as she spoke to the girl consigned behind bars, neither the elegance nor the smile befitting a Tokiwadai girl once dropped.

If Ayu had to pin one word onto that, it was 'irritating'.

She held no enmity towards Junko. Even so…

"Y-yes, it has."

She couldn't find the words to say. She had never expected to speak to her again. Ultimately, she had fallen so far that she truly believed that didn't even deserve the right to speak with her, let alone gaze into her eyes.

"Are you doing alright?"

"..."

Mitsuari Ayu continued to stare, off to the side, unable to even utter a single word. What was she even supposed to say to that? Was she supposed to begrudgingly say that she was fine? Rant about how she hated it all?

No matter what, she stood far below the girl named Hokaze Junko. This wasn't simply a matter of power. Junko had walked forward. That was the undeniable truth. Unlike Ayu who had worn the facade of a kind and reliable older sister to hide the pathetic wretch she was, Junko had taken that self and become it.

She was someone who had cried for help as a bid for attention—a validation of herself. When that had failed, she did nothing but fall and strip away those haughty masks to reveal herself.

What was someone as hollow as her supposed to say?

"Why are you even here?" That was it. It was nothing short of a pathetic form of lashing out coated with a derisive sneer, but that was her only way to reply to the immaculacy before her.

"Is there something wrong?"

"You were there at Ground Geo too. _I saw you._ I hurt your Queen. I attacked your faction. I threatened your home." Without a single flare of rage, Ayu listed off her sins one-by-one. "So, why are you even coming to me as if I was an old friend? I'm your enemy."

"You had disappeared after the incident in IDEAL. Even though you were a Tokiwadai student, I never saw you again before news of your death made the rounds. Rakko-san was never the same again after that and went missing as well. Iruka-san never let go of her obsessions." The girl in vertical rolls felt a warm feeling running down her eyes. In a rare moment that very few would probably ever be privy too, that feeling of aloofness Hokaze Junko carried was quickly broken away as she pulled the back of hands in to wipe away at her eyes. "I was happy. Even though you were the enemy, I found out that you were alive. Even if things would never go back to the way they were, you were there. That was enough."

The world and the people around it all had inevitably changed. Hokaze Junko was no different in that regard.

But, she still held onto that naive and childish belief that the girls of IDEAL could be together and happy again. One might call that naivete a sin, but it was one that she could never absolve herself of nor was it one she wanted to.

So, even this. Just talking to Ayu across the plexiglass before her.

That was enough.

And to Mitsuari Ayu, that was the worst possible answer.

"You're right. Things can never go back to how they were." For the first time, she finally gazed into the eyes before her.

"Even though IDEAL brought us all together, the experiment tore us apart." Many of the children who had taken part had died and those who had not were left forever changed. Those lacerations ran deep and would never truly heal, leaving nothing more than a sham of a scar behind on those girls' psyches.

"Shokuhou eventually scavenged the rest of us and you became her second fiddle while the rest of us were left on the wayside to deal with it all." For Yumiya Rakko, it was loneliness. For Yumiya Iruka, it was obsession. So, what was the scar that was left behind for Mitsuari Ayu?

"All that was left for me was to lash out. The world was unfair. It was her fault. It was their fault."

Tracing back her actions, the answer was should have been obvious.

Resentment.

And much like Yumiya Rakko's loneliness, it was a scar that dragged her to the depths of Hell. It built up from numerous sources that interlinked and fed into each other until it became nothing short of an unsightly keloid.

"That all happened. That's why. We can never go back."

That unsightly deformation was all that she needed to no longer deserve it all. Even if she had childishly and selfishly made a request to Kamijou Touma, she could never truly return.

"That doesn't matter."

Though she should have expected it, Ayu still flinched as Hokaze Junko wiped away and disregarded those self-derisive words without either batting an eye or dropping her smile.

"Of course it matters." So, she lashed back out. She raised her voice to a shout. "It was my fault that everyone died or was scarred! It was my fault for dropping out of the experiment and staying alive! It was my fault for acting like a big sister to those girls while being completely worthless! It was I who selfishly tried to take her own life! It was I who continued to resent and attack you all! So, resent me, dammit!"

Her face contorted as she shouted at Junko. Her eyes held not a single shred of calm nor resolve as her gaze once again trailed away from the girl she was shouting at. As her empty rage flew out, she gritted her teeth at each pause as her voice softened to what almost seemed like a whimper.

"Please, resent me. Otherwise, I can't..."

What was the scar that was left behind on Mitsuari Ayu? One could be forgiven for believing it was resentment—but that was merely a mask, a symptom.

The identity of her scar was…

"Toomine Kanari-san."

Hearing that name was enough to send chills down her spine. But, those chills were not laced with fear. What formed them was something far more intrinsic to Mitsuari Ayu than some flimsy concept like fear. It was enough to make her clutch at her arms, hold herself as tightly as possible and further avert her gaze.

"You're still being chained down by that day, aren't you?"

"She died protecting the two of us." While keeping her arms around herself, she lifted a hand towards her marshmallow hair—the same hair that scientist playing hero had teased her for. "When the scientists in charge had asked for me to decide who would no longer be proceeding with the experiments, I thought it would be for the best to cut me off to let the others be rewarded for their hard work and bloom."

It was a simple wish, as one seen as an older sister by the other girls in IDEAL. She was ultimately fine with it. She couldn't stand to see their hard work go unrewarded.

"But, then the next experiment happened. I watched from the side and was slow to help stop it. I was too slow to even help prevent her from dying. I was too weak, so why was I allowed to survive when those girls died that day?!"

In the end, that was her scar.

A relentless and endless guilt that coalesced into a twisted flower of resentment that turned and lashed out on the world.

"We were never intended as candidates to become Level 5s from the very start! When the Parameter List gave the choice between me and Shokuhou, the higher ups picked the one concurrently developing with Exterior. So, why was someone like me allowed to live through that day? Their hard work was left unrewarded so that resources could be funneled to Shokuhou! How was that fair for them? How could I watch as their efforts were trampled on?"

Those pangs of guilt had only formed a seed as she had left IDEAL. She was so powerless in the end. Perhaps, that's why she had eventually been drawn to Kamijou Touma—trying to recreate the wonderful pillar Toomine Kanari had been in those few short minutes to shut out all that guilt.

Regardless, it all eventually boiled over. She had eventually found out about Shokuhou Misaki. She had eventually found out about Shokuhou Misaki's interference. She had eventually found out that everything she had done wasn't worth a damn thing in the end.

And the rest was history.

She threw everything away and merely compounded onto her list of sins, lamenting her own powerlessness.

So, there was nothing left for her.

She was ultimately hollow.

"The Queen never intended for that all to happen. By the time she could act, it was too late and the best she could do was nothing more than a form of aftercare. She had hoped that by giving us all a chance in the School Garden, we could all finally walk forward."

In many ways, she did more than what was necessary. After all, it was thanks to Shokuhou Misaki's connections and her influence as a future incumbent Level 5 that the survivors of IDEAL had all gathered around the School Garden. Despite being the Level 5 who reigned over telepathy, she failed to account for the aftereffects of the event.

"When she encountered you again, I'm sure many things raced through her mind. But, above all, I'm sure she realized that it all never truly came to an end."

Ultimately, that was Shokuhou's sin—one of many.

Even as Mitsuari had unleashed her resentment towards Shokuhou, she still pointed her in the direction of the hero with a smile on her face when he showed up.

Perhaps that was her atonement for failing to tie up those loose ends from the start.

"Even so, that doesn't change the fact that I'm still at fault. It's not like there's a place left for me out there."

"It absolutely does."

Those words Ayu heard before the sound of something breaking reached her ears.

"Eh?!" The girl stared, aghast, as Hokaze Junko stood up and slammed her fist into the acrylic barrier between them, shattering it and leaving those numerous dull fragments to fly into the prisoner's space.

As she stared, dumbfounded, a dull object flew into her head with enough force to knock her off the chair and onto the ground.

"You don't have to keep living like that! If you've lost yourself then find it! If you're drowning in guilt, let us pull you out of it! That was what the Queen was trying to reach out for. She, too, didn't want to see you drowning in sadness like this! It's alright to reach a hand out when you're drowning and cry for help!"

That immaculate girl with tears streaming down her face and blood trickling down her fist cried out. Though it may have hurt her to berate someone who she could once call a friend like this, she did so anyway. That was what Ayu could see as she turned her head up from the ground to look at Junko.

Though that was likely going to be cut short as a door opened up from the visitor's side. Violence was not exactly in good form in such a situation.

"That way..." The girl's arms were grabbed as she was restrained and pulled away from the window she had damaged. "Maybe you, I, and Iruka-chan can all be together again some day."

Those were the last words Ayu had heard before Hokaze Junko was removed from the area.

"Inmate Mitsuari."

The voice of the guard who had brought her to the visitation room echoed from behind her to break the silence that had taken hold after Junko's escort. But, she paid no mind to it as her hand grasped at the object that had hit her head and now lay in front of her, out of the eyes of anyone else but her.

It was nothing more than a normal flip phone with a camera, but she opened it while it lay on the floor. On that screen was a single message.

"So, that's what you were doing." The girl who had earlier been doing nothing but averting her eyes chuckled. With some slight movements, she tapped at a few moments, glad that it had been set to be silent.

"It's time for you to return to your cell."

"Understood." She picked up the phone and kept it behind her back as she stood up and faced the guard.

With a smile, she pointed with her conspicuous hand at the guard and quickly aimed the camera lens from her side. "I'll do that later. For now, lead me to the exit and a place with a good change of clothes."

While the AIM Jammer was enough to disrupt the concentration of any esper, there were a few methods by which one could bypass that. One such way was for the esper to use tools to supplement their concentration such as Shokukou Misaki's remotes. Normally, tools and the like would not be an issue due to the facility's initial confiscation of anything upon admission. But, a tool so blatantly passed along under their very noses was another issue entirely.

"Follow me, then." The guard held open the door and simply made her follow as she placed that phone in between the waistband of her pants and her hip.

It was time for the girl to return to the outside world, even if it was just for a short while.

* * *

 _You'll probably need to clean up the mess you left behind. So, you should shut off that self-loathing ability of yours and get off your butt. Maybe you'll even find that answer and place you claim to lack_ _._

 _-Your lovely Shokuhou Misaki-sama~_

What a truly strange form of aftercare.

* * *

 **A/N: Another arbitrary time period, another. I really hope to get these out monthly at least, but that always seems to be beyond my means between me ending up getting my writing frenzies at 2 am and the amount of stuff I have to study (to the point where I'm pretty sure some of it leaked onto this chapter). With a new chapter comes something new I wanted to try: responding to reviews. I feel like I've hit enough reviews that I can actually get that done.**

 **[whwsms:** **When I saw your review for the last chapter, I immediately bolted off to see who the other person who dared encroach on my territory. I jest. Honestly, she's a surprisingly well-done character. Between NT11 and Astral Buddy, I'd honestly been able to pin a lot more depth onto the girl than I had originally ascribed to the point where the above interlude ended up becoming a meld of a push on the back for her and a character essay. Old habits of mine must die hard it seems. To be fair to Seria, though. I'm sure she'd be well aware of Touma's little visit to Ayu (and any future ones, though given NT's continuity, that may be unlikely). No need for Maria to play middleman reporter.]**

 **[Mr?:** **Honestly, the fact that you feel that the chapter and story mimic a light novel's feeling is a huge compliment. I'm practically blushing here~**

 **In a way, Kizuna is oddly independent of the main cast. She's also just an oddball and I think you'll see what I mean by that when I flesh her (and the rest of the antagonist cast) out.**

 **I can honestly only hope that I can live up to expectations since there seem to be big shoes to fill here.]**

 **[The Crack Shipping Guy:** **With regards to Kizuna, while I can say that she won't be the type of villain who is in need of help or saving, she's still a broken human being in some aspect (much like a majority of characters in ToAru). Though, the details are still fuzzy in terms of how things will pan out as I'm still debating through how to proceed with the endgame when I eventually get there. ]**

 **On that note, the first of those truncated conversations has finally made the spotlight and unexpectedly was the longest part in this entire chapter, clocking in at a whopping 2482 words in comparison to Part 4's 1789 words. Honestly, I'm half certain I've violated some law of writing because of the super long Interlude/Between the Lines, but I can't really do much more than move on at this point.**

 **I've been drawing a fair number of parallels between characters on our protagonist side, but I wonder if I'm being a bit too on the nose about that. I may need to work on making those parallelisms a tad subtler.**

 **Though, the one thing I can say is I've placed a fair amount of subtler foreshadowing in the reader's faces in regards to a future event (and motif). I wonder how many people will catch onto that as well.**

 **Now, where will Ayu go? What is up with Accelerator and his opponent? Will Othinus ever return to the shoulder she desires? The pieces on the game board are on the move. I believe the famous sentence was " _Alea Iacta Est"_.**

 **Till next time, though, I shall lay down my pen.**

 **For a story with an Enshuu tag, there has been a surprising lack of Enshuu, eh?**


	7. Chapter 06

**Chapter 06**

 **The Multivalent Mechanical Onslaught.**

 _ **TRANSITION_STATE_HUMANITY.**_

 **1**

The three of them had ground to complete halt at a three-way intersection in that underground mall. Time may have been ticking away ever so consistently, but something odd had overwhelmed Kamijou, Kuroyoru, and Kumokawa's rush to keep moving forward.

"Where is everyone..." Kumokawa muttered as the realization had finally dawned upon each of them.

The world around them had become bereft of people. They did not know when but not a single soul seemed to wander the wide-open pathways around them.

Without another word, the three of them quickly stood back to back, each facing one of the three respective paths that merged onto that intersection.

They had no basis to gauge how long the surroundings had been like this, but they had become sitting ducks. Without the implicit shield and reference point that the crowd had given them, the little minutia that Kamijou had worked towards had come crumbling down in an instant. The enemy had already delivered their first strike.

Moreover, it was clear that simply waving his right hand would be nothing short of a futile effort. It was like how people-clearing fields were hardly inactivated by Kamijou's presence in their range.

Though, Kamijou had his mind immediately drawn to that idea, he had to discard it. There was one thing that was truly certain from all of this: the enemy was immersed in the world of Academy City's science worship. Magic hardly could be the culprit of this.

In that case, what could be done here and what had been done here?

"Dammit, this is getting us nowhere." Kuroyoru spat out, seething with annoyance. "We're not going to make any progress if we just stand here!"

Despite her frustration, neither Kumokawa nor Kamijou answered. After all, the reply would be obvious.

They had been placed into check without even realizing it and were barely skirting away from checkmate. Any misstep could lead to the three of them being mowed down in a rain of shells.

They could hardly split up. Any idiot could tell that would be fatal.

Unfortunately…

It felt like the world had shaken around them as an echo of a crash resounded from above and behind Kamijou Touma. The wall behind him and the ceiling above fragmented and crumbled as debris fell down upon the three.

On instinct, the three of them dashed forward to get out of the way of the falling rubble and what had come falling through with it.

"The Enemy Blaster?!"

As someone vaguely familiar with the weaponry under the purview of her subordinates, the form of the Powered Suit before Kuroyoru was enough for quick recognition.

But, before she could react to the eight-legged menace that had threatened them, shutters fell, blocking off her and Maria's respective access to the three-way intersection.

To Kamijou, it was obvious. The enemy had commenced their ambush and separated the three of them in one single move.

Now, Kamijou had fought numerous espers and magicians since the start of his memories. He had even confronted a magic god beyond the end of existence. But, the enemy before him was none of those. It was the tried and true counter named conventional weaponry.

"CHANGE OF PLANS!" He shouted. There was no time to lose or think too deeply. It seemed the Enemy Blaster was still taking in data from the surroundings so he had to finish acting before that process finished. "ESCAPE AND FOCUS ON MEETING AT THE EXIT AS OUR RENDEZVOUS POINT!"

He had no clue what Kumokawa and Kuroyoru were facing on the other end, but there was no guarantee that they had time to think either. There was no need for any fancy codes or the like. While there were many exits for this underground mall, the two girls should know which one he had referred to.

Refusing to linger, he immediately ran down the pathway before him and turned the corner. It was time to gain as much of a head-start as possible. Though distance would not have been enough of a buffering factor, long range weaponry could still be diverted by slight changes in angles of placement of obstacles.

In other words, the suit needed to have him in its line of sight.

It was a stopgap measure, but it would be useful enough for him to concoct a counterattack.

So, it didn't take long for him to turn the next corner he saw.

"KYAAAH!"

Catching sight of it too late, he was greeted with a scream as he rounded the corner and collided with something. As his legs caught onto whatever he had collided with, he lost his balance and fell forward onto the ground, sliding a few feet until the friction had quashed his momentum.

"What..." He raised his head to gain his bearings before he pushed off the ground with his hands until he had stood back up, albeit with a wobbling posture. With his gaze once again not being obstructed by the ground beneath him, he finally saw what he had collided with.

"Another person…?"

She looked to be the same age as or possibly older than Kamijou at first glance—clearly no older than early college aged, but clearly no younger than high school-aged. Though she seemed to be cringing after falling straight on her butt, he could see a striking pair of pink eyes that matched her wavy pink hair—colored contacts and dye, perhaps?

"What's going on…?" Kamijou reached a hand out to the girl who had yet to get up. He was sure that there hadn't been any people as far as he could see. Was he nearing the effective radius of whatever was occurring?

"Hey, that's what I should be asking you!" As she grabbed his hand and stood up, she quickly let out all her beratings without reserve. "Where is everybody? Who the hell are you? What the hell is going on?!"

Upon closer inspection, she was wearing a super loose, black hoodie with white lines on her sleeves. The zipper to her hoodie was partially down revealing a dangerously bare chest, just barely stopping before any semblance of cleavage could be visible. Her pants were a dark blue-purple pair of skinny jeans that seemed to be slightly rolled up above the ankles, revealing her bare malleoli above the ankle collar of her white sneakers.

Was this kind of stuff what was in fashion among high school and college girls these days? Kamijou Touma could almost swear that a billion years of life was coming back to him as he stifled the temptation to utter a word like "whippersnapper."

"Dammit, now's not the time for that!" Without waiting for her to pull her hand away, he bolted back into a run, pulling her along.

"H-hey! What's going on?! Answer me!"

"We're being chased by something with lots of guns! If I left you there, you'd be killed! Please don't make this any more awkward than it already is for Kamijou-san here?! Alright?!"

Her eyebrows shot up and her eyes eyes widened in immediacy. Perhaps she didn't expect the young boy to assert himself, so she closed her eyes, took a deep sigh.

"I guess, I'll be stuck with you for a bit, huh." Consigned to reality, she couldn't escape the fact that this strange younger (probably by no more than 2 years) boy was pulling her along for the ride. "The name's Kizuna. Kizuna Kanon. What's yours?"

"Kamijou Touma. It's a pleasure to meet you." It was in that moment that Kamijou Touma had reinforced the reason why he had a thing for older women. They truly were more refined and understanding. Older women were truly wonderful.

But that's something he'd keep silent on for now.

Priorities, priorities.

* * *

 **2**

"You've gotten yourself into a mess, haven't you?"

Despite the displeasure her words were seething with, the shining beacon of malice known as Misaka Worst grinned as she turned to gaze upon the nightscape of Academy City from her lofty position on an overpass.

It didn't take long after she had left the cozy atmosphere of the place she (reluctantly) called home that she had come to recognize it.

How could she ignore it? With the scurrying Anti-Skills and the wreckage of a truck that was clearly the work of shady entities, she could tell what was going on without much context. That albino boy had caught a whiff of something pungent.

"But, don't leave this Misaka out. This is the kind of stuff Misaka lives for."

In the hand not holding an umbrella was a smartphone that was repeatedly parsing through security camera footage. She may have only held 20% of the original's capacity, but 200 Megavolts was a pretty damn large capacity on its own.

Hacking into camera footage was child's play.

It wouldn't take long for her to find her adulterous Level 5. The big question from there was what would she do next?

Steal the kill? Provide some assistance and shoot his pride as a result?

The possibilities were endless.

* * *

 **3**

When she thought about it, there was only one option Mitsuari Ayu had when she had walked out of the Reformatory—rendezvous with Kamijou Touma.

Unfortunately, that presented with some difficulties. Her powers may have centered on telepathy, but that did not mean she was anything close to a mind reader. There was no guarantee that she would ever cross paths with him again if she tried predicting it. Beyond that, she could not predict most of his route.

 _Most._

In reality, there was one point she knew where he would be with certainty: the endpoint, the very warehouse she had directed him towards. As long as she could get there, she could be guaranteed that she would run into Kamijou Touma.

That was the plan she had as she speed-walked her way through District 7 as the rain continued to descend on her. Though she didn't have an umbrella, the Tokiwadai uniform and designer bag she had taken as well as her cotton candy hair were currently kept dry under the protection of a transparent rain coat.

It was simple, but that meant making the long trek across the District 7, which would inevitably take some time.

As she eventually crossed what would be the half-way point, Mitsuari Ayu came to a halt. The visibility was relatively poor, but she could see a silhouette of white standing out from down the road, walking towards her, unaware. Incredulously, the girl walked forward and closer until the form of that silhouette came further and further into focus, to the point where the rain could not obscure their forms any further.

Sure enough, a taller (and more radially gifted) girl in a Kirigaoka uniform and glasses came into view under their own umbrellas. She was part of a pair consisting of a short nun in white with a familiar-looking doll on her shoulder.

"Y-you..." The girl spoke up loud enough that the pair could know her words were directed at them, but came to a halt. The moment she had caught a glimpse of that nun's face, she knew immediately who she was. She was, after all, the girl who now held the most attachment to Kamijou Touma. Even when she had been entrenched in the underbelly of the city, she was aware of her, but she could hardly find the proper words to say to them.

"Who are you?" The young nun asked without pause. "You're wearing short-hair's uniform."

 _Short-hair? Who is she—wait, she's met Misaka?_

"She's probably just someone surprised to see a nun in this city." The more biting tone came from the mouth of a...doll? The odd 15-centimeter tall humanoid figure sitting on top of her shoulder cut in. "We have to focus on finding the human first. Ignore her."

The taller girl in glasses shifted her feet around a bit with an expression of confusion painted across her face. "I'm sorry."

With the apology and a quick bow from each of them, the nun and the glasses girl passed by her and continued to scamper off.

Mitsuari Ayu clenched her teeth as she watched them pass by her. Time seemed to almost slow down as they were heading away from her and would likely be out of sight within seconds.

Could she allow it? Could she allow herself to even talk to that nun? She had never held a grudge against her. After all, she had never met her once. But that girl was now his pillar. Was that really something she had any right to encroach on?

She had long since lost her right to that role by her own fault and that girl had long since taken up that mantle.

" _This is your homework. Go get his help. Get enough that you will actually accept it this time."_

She had long since bore resentment towards the girl who said those words. It would be far from the truth to say she also didn't bear any resentment towards the girl who currently stood by Kamijou Touma's side now.

But, regardless of whether or not that was her attempt at projection, there was one thing she had come to realize in the past few hours.

 _Some homework this is. It's turning out to be more like some long-form paper._

She could not let herself stay in the mire she had given birth to.

"You're looking for Kamijou Touma, right? I can lead you to him."

It was time to take the first step into the vast unknown with a smile. Whatever answer that Shokuhou had alluded to, whatever it was that she had sought after, she could not find it until she mustered the courage to take the first step onto a world of infinite paths.

She would break that stagnation.

"You." The nun had only run a few meters before grinding to a halt to face the girl who had called back out to her. In reciprocation, Mitsuari had taken an about-face and walked back up to her. "Who are you?"

Mitsuari took in a deep breath and let herself finally relax. Even if she bore some resentment. Even if her muscles deigned to attempt to keep on stiffening. She could still walk forward. "I'm Mitsuari Ayu—a girl who fell hopelessly in love with him over a year ago."

* * *

 **4**

When it came to the Number 1, a stalemate was one of the most dangerous scenarios he could contest with. The concept of a drawn-out battle was something he couldn't say he was familiar with as most of the scrimmages he had to deal with were one-sided in one direction or the other. The long war against Kihara Amata on the 30th of September had driven that very notion into him.

There may have been no route but forward on a one-way road, but an obstacle that could not be blown past was too dangerous. Such was the fate of one whose strength was bound by a strict time limit.

Though it was no longer in sight, whatever had been surrounding him was keeping pace with Accelerator as he sped down that night-stained road, propelled by four tornadoes at his back. But, despite the pursuit, not a single attack had been launched since he broke through the encirclement. He was being pursued but the onslaught had completely been muted.

 _In that case._

They weren't attacking. Likely, the camouflaged enemies were refusing to give their own positions and forms away. But, that was truly meaningless to Accelerator.

 _Do you really think you're invulnerable with such a weak-ass gimmick?_

The counterattack would commence.

Accelerator smashed into a nearby sidewalk causing it to fragment into numerous large and small pieces of concrete. With his feet on the ground, he grabbed a large fragment the size of his upper body without a hint of effort and threw it.

The boy didn't need to see them. Whatever was chasing him could remain under its fancy camouflage as much as it wanted. If he couldn't rely on sight, he simply had to use another cue—sound.

The concrete chunk flew straight towards the ground where he had heard something touch down. All it took to cripple something was to change its center of gravity all of a sudden. Even if it was simply concrete, Accelerator could do enough damage to break it all off.

" _How predictable."_

'Something' diverted and smashed the concrete before it could reach the target point and the fragments flew straight back towards Accelerator.

"Tch." Clicking his tongue, he let those fragments hit his reflection barrier before they bounced off him and landed a few feet away from him on the ground. There was no point in trying to reflect them back and start a repeat of earlier.

"Don't you dare underestimate me, motherfucker!" With a snarl, Accelerator smashed one arm onto the ground, throwing up fragments of concrete and asphalt into the air and swiped his arm in front of him, creating a large continuous storm in front of him. The fragments crashed into each other and further broke down until a large amount of particulate matter began to shear at whatever was in the path of the gust. One could almost compare it to a tornado on its side.

He would wear down and erode away the assailant who remained camouflaged. The continuous particulate matter storm would shear away until his enemy was stripped bare.

" _It's not unnatural that you'd want to clean up what you see as a mess you left behind."_ From within the vortex, the voice reverberated, unfettered and undampened by the turbulence. _"But, you've made a fatal miscalculation, Accelerator."_

"You think?" Gritting his teeth in annoyance, he stood back up on his feet and spat out a single retort, keeping his arms out to maintain the storm.

" _You protected your world. You came back to Academy City a victor who had trampled the darkness that chained you. You may have been involved in a few incidents here and there, but your drive is gone. You've attained some sort of peace and lost that singular drive that had guided you before the war. Your edge has waned and your blade has dulled."_

"Pathetic." Accelerator snorted as he found the words being thrown at him nothing short of laughable. "If you think that's honestly a weakness, then you're just another one of Academy City's pathetic sob stories. Do you think you're stronger because you have a singular purpose driving you? Because you haven't attained peace? Don't make me laugh. You're nothing special."

" _Indeed. I'm not. I'm one of many. But we all came to similar realizations. Helplessness is not a virtue. We were too weak to act. So we decided to become monsters. Even if we could not be virtuous enough to sheath out claws and fangs as such, we could become something with a semblance of significance. You did the same as well, did you not? To protect that farce you call a family?"_

"So, what?"

" _Ehehehehehehehe. You asked if I thought that we were any stronger because we hadn't attained peace? Absolutely. Because I still have a peace I desire to attain, I'm willing to become a demon for that single purpose. That's why…"_

As the boy's words tapered off, a sight appeared at the edges of the tornado as if sand was withering off and crumbling away within that wind. It happened in an instant. An eye had once again entered Accelerator's field of vision.

 _Damn-_

Something flew out. It was almost instant, but a flesh like substance resembling a tentacle slammed straight into the ground in front of Accelerator before raising itself into his back and knocking him into the sky.

" _We'll surpass even the #1 himself. The position of the strongest is quite the dulling existence, isn't it, Accelerator?"_

As his consciousness returned, he could see the rainy sky above him as well as a few flecks of blood he had unconsciously coughed up as his internal organs had been struck. It was as if he alone had a segment of time cut out as the world around him continued to act.

It had happened again and yet, he couldn't figure out an answer. That eye had caused his mind to freeze up whenever he saw it. But, he couldn't ignore it.

 _Do not let yourself be swept away in the more comfortable direction just because you have been shaken._

 _We were too weak to act. So we decided to become monsters. Even if we could not be virtuous enough to sheath out claws and fangs as such, we could become something with a semblance of significance._

Those words played through his mind over and over again as gravity started to do its work and pull him down. As he fell, a certain concept seemed to sting at his heart.

 _The virtuous monster, huh._

* * *

 **5**

 _That idiot!_

Kuroyoru, refusing to compromise her position and scream those words out loud replayed them internally as much as she could when she heard Kamijou Touma's orders. While he seemed to be fairly competent at thinking on his feet, she could say he reacted too quickly.

After all, he had forgotten one key point.

 _He completely forgot about Bomber Lance._

Splitting up was a bad idea and she needed to go back and assist him as quickly as she could. The Enemy Blaster was not going to be an enemy someone like him could defeat easily. Moreover, there was no guarantee of there being a pilot on it with whom he could play mind games.

"Time to break through." She held her hand up to face the shutter. Her Bomber Lance would turn the nitrogen around her into a spear sent from her hand into the metal barricade. She could cut through it in an instant.

But, she never followed through. Before she could thrust forward, her pupils drifted towards her right, down the open corridor in the mall. A familiar noise had begun to resonate through the air, resembling the beating of a bee's wings mixed with the grating of gears and chains.

Her head finally turned to see the source of the sound.

Without skipping a beat, she formed the lance in her hand and slashed to the side. A metal chair that had been thrown by the leg at her split in half before both pieces flew to the side and landed inches away from her.

It had a radius of seventy centimeters. Its metal border contained two sets of propellers inside to provide and control movement. A chainsaw with the capability to grab and throw items with deadly precision surrounded its outer border.

It was a machine she knew all too well and it was hardly alone. There were at least five in her line of sight as she turned her body to face the direction the chair had been thrown from.

"Edge Bees..."

If there were Edge Bees in the area, that obviously mean that there was a Bee Launcher that acted as their source. That meant that even if she took the ones she saw down, there was a chance of another hundred of them being launched. There was further likelihood that Kamijou would not be pursued by just the Enemy Blaster at this rate. Nor was it likely that they would let Kumokawa wander freely.

The two of them were capable without a doubt, but they were not equipped to fight this threat. In actuality, Kuroyoru needed to cut the imminent problem at its roots.

However…

"The Modelcase_"RAILGUN", Enemy Blaster, and the Edge Bees…"

She muttered the name of the weapons that had already dispatched in front of them. There was a common thread behind each and every one of those machines aside from the base of them being Academy City's Powered Suit technology.

"YOU BASTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARDS!" The girl charged forward with a roar, manifesting another spear on her left hand and using it to slice at the first Edge Bee in her line of sight. The machine fell apart before it could ever unleash its trap hooks.

Each and every one of those weapons was a model used in the Freshmen's failed assault over Fremea Seivelun. Each of them was once used by Silver Cross Alpha that day.

"WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE MOCKING?!"

The girl's once swelling rage intensified past threshold and seethed out.

She noted all of the Edge Bees coming towards her from the same general direction and ran to the next closest one before cutting it apart in one swing as well. After pivoting, she changed directions and charged at the next one.

The destruction of numerous Edge Bees in succession without the trap's activation must have triggered some hasty action in the Launcher's operator as another ten Bees approached from the earlier direction and surrounded her.

But, despite being outnumbered, Kuroyoru had nothing short of a wide grin plastered upon her face. Her face seemed to resemble that of a deranged killer who was facing down their victim.

A slow rhythmic pulse of wind seemed to form from around her.

"Protecting Kihara Enshuu. Figuring out what I want to do with my life. All of that shit was and still a pain in the ass. I'm not made for this shit. I have no idea what to do! However—"

Numerous hands shot out from beneath Kuroyoru Umidori's coat. Spears of pure nitrogen formed at their fingertips and palms as they were directed around into a storm through the flexible polymer-based arms that connected them to the girl.

Within half a second the five Edge Bees within range fell to the ground, sliced apart into numerous fragments.

"None of that matters. Because I know what I want to do right at this moment."

The black sheep of the Dark May Project thrust herself forward into a dash aiming to slice at everything in sight with the tempest of spears she wielded.

"DON'T THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH YOUR MOCKERY! I'LL CRUSH YOU! I'LL TEAR YOU ALL APART AND STAMP ON YOUR DAMN CARCASSES TILL THE FEAR OF KUROYORU UMIDORI HAS BEEN CARVED INTO YOUR HEARTS!"

* * *

 **6**

"What's even chasing us?!" At some point, Touma had stopped pulling Kanon around and the two were running side-by-side away from the approaching machine. "You said lots of guns, but you're not being specific here! Give me a better description!"

"Eh? You sure about that? I'm pretty sure we're being chased by Academy City military technology!" It was understandable that knowing what was approaching was probably better for the psyche than being chased by some unidentified machine with 'lots of guns' but it wasn't like she would know what it was.

"Specifics! Hurry! Running will lead to a situation of attrition. We need to figure out a way to counterattack it or completely escape it! What did it look like? Highway Cheetah? Dragon Rider? Large Weapon?!"

"Understood!" Though she was a (good-looking) stranger barking orders and a bit of jargon at him, Kamijou found no other option than being a doormat and complying. "It was headless, stood on eight legs, and was at least twice as tall as me. It had a blocky shape and asymmetrical arms with guns on each of them!"

Kanon stayed silent for a few seconds before uttering a name. "That's Enemy Blaster."

"Enemy what? How?"

"That's the official designation for the Powered Suit you described. And before you ask, I do research on central neural interfaces for Powered Suits at my university. I have a decent knowledge of the type of machinery I'm working to interface with."

A preemptive answer. Despite the panic, she seemed to be on a fairly proper wavelength. Was it the charm of the mature woman that allowed her to keep some air of calm in this tense situation? If so, Kamijou Touma could not help but admire such moxie.

"Any weaknesses we can exploit?"

Given her supposed background with Powered Suits, she would probably be the one most aware of any weaknesses. He may have had the misfortune of encountering Powered Suits throughout his many escapades, but he lacked the experience in countering and facing them that someone like Hamazura Shiage had.

"It's not built for urban warfare."

"What?"

"The Suit was built for use during the War. It was meant to be deployed to Russia. It lacks a camera so it takes its inputs from other sensors and radar to allow it to detect obstacles, targets, and other elements. Those specs were better optimized for use in open areas. In other words, more objects can cause noise and throw off the aim of whoever has to interpret that data, especially if it's unmanned."

Cutting herself off, Kanon grabbed Touma's hand and pulled him into an electronics store on their right. Quickly, she jumped the counter and crouched down, not leaving Touma any room to do much else.

"The second main weak point has to do with its weapons technology. The smoothbore gun can fire armor-piercing shells, but it creates a period of time in which the sensors' inputs are all completely obscured."

In other words, firing its shells caused a blind period for whoever was operating it.

At the very least, that was what Touma had come to understand. It wasn't a particularly promising opening, but it was their only one so far.

"That still leaves disabling it."  
Tapping his hands over his pockets he sighed. He had not been carrying a single thing on him besides his wallet and his cell phone.

"Can you install a virus on it?"

"Not a chance."

"Shot down in an instant, huh?"

"The suit's likely encrypted, so I'd need to get past that encryption key. Not to mention, that entire point assumes that I carry a computer virus or can code one from scratch on my phone."

"Ehhh?"

"DON'T GIVE ME THAT LOOK! THAT'S JUST HOW IT IS SO STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE I'M USELESS OR PITIFUL, DAMMIT!"

"But, isn't that kind of—?" He couldn't help it. The illusion of the reliable older sister type was breaking down.

"Look, I don't have access to the source code or the like and codes on various boards are going to be unique to their systems!" She pulled out her phone from her pocket and opened up a folder full of powered suit designs, picking out Enemy Blaster's specifically. The image looked like a detailed blueprint of various parts, boards, and circuitry that wouldn't be out of place on a technical paper or a patent. "Like these ones which deal with how the user's legs control the suit's 8 legs or the arm-to-weaponry interface here."

Touma frowned. As useful as a researcher could be, a specialist was just that. If her specialty didn't allow for any alteration in the suit's protocols, they may as well have just been equals before its might.

But, as she waved that phone around before his eyes, something seemed to grab his attention from within that blueprint. He was hardly what one could call skilled with machines or circuitry, but there was nothing he could do aside from grab onto every trivial possibility he could.

"What about this one?"

* * *

 **7**

Seemingly left behind Kuroyoru and Kamijou was Kumokawa Maria, standing on the opposite side of a barrier to Kamijou Touma.

 _Focus on meeting at the exit as the rendezvous point._

That was his order to her and Kuroyoru. Though she could hardly be sure of whether Kuroyoru was adhering to them, she could say something with certainty: she was not going to—at least for now.

There was a far greater issue at hand. It seemed that once again, they had been too focused on what was more immediate to pay any mind to it, but an important issue lay before them. What happened to the once abundant crowd that once had surrounded them?

With all the commotion from the sudden realization and the subsequent ambush from above, they had never stopped to consider what was going on.

"Dammit, they've been pulled into the enemy's flow."

Once again, the formless enemy had taken it upon themselves to seize an advantage by splitting them up and throwing so much information at them that there was no time to process.

Moreover, in contrast to Kamijou and Kuroyoru, Kumokawa had yet to be ambushed. As a matter of fact, there was zero sign of any attack coming despite the ambient tension.

Maria started lifting her foot, readying herself to straighten her joints, whip her body, and force the back of her foot onto the shutter.

 _No...calm down, Maria._

Taking a deep sigh, she put her foot back down to the ground. There was no need to try and do something rash or something that obviously wouldn't work. The shutter had fallen to cut her off from the others and though she had Violence Donut in her arsenal, it was hardly a useful tool in this scenario. She could wail around on it as much as she wanted but it wouldn't make a difference.

There were two choices that lay before Kumokawa Maria at this juncture.

The first was to follow Kamijou's rendezvous order—make her way to the exit they were already heading towards and meet up there. All things considered, it was the safest course of action. But, that safety left too much rigidity and assumed that things wouldn't get difficult enough for anyone to be held up.

After all, they had already been thrown off their game when the number of people around them had tapered to a solid zero.

Which led to the second option. There was a cause. Be it an Esper ability or some strange 'Made in Academy City' technology (likely the former), there was something causing the great disappearance of all of these people.

Assuming the former, there was a limited number of ways it could be done. Esper abilities rarely fell out of a common categorical nature: a sole effect. Despite how versatile an ability was, it always operated on a sole principle or action as its core.

The creation of matter from different physical systems.

The manipulation of electrons.

The manipulation of vectors.

The amplification of centrifugal forces.

An Esper's versatility with their ability was derived from their creativity, resourcefulness, and necessity. But, every Esper ability stemmed from an underlying physical action.

From there, it was a matter of narrowing it down.

She turned away from the shutter and began running down the corridor, away from where they had come from.

 _The fact that it worked to clear out a busy location means it isn't a telepathic ability that works on an individual basis. It likely works off of an area of effect or a broad effect._

It was a quick deduction, but Maria had a proper baseline for it. After all, her sister was best frenemies with a certain Level 5. Despite that Level 5's capabilities, she was still highly limited in terms of precision and breadth, leaving a tradeoff.

 _Whoever we're dealing with is not a Level 5. It's highly likely that they created such a broad effect due to a simple ability over an area. Assuming that, their position would be…_

Maria cut her thoughts off as she came to realize something.

 _No, it doesn't even need to be that complex of a method. Whoever it was would want to keep an eye out on our positions to fine-tune their boundary._

There was no guarantee she could calculate the area of effect and no guarantee she could even find the boundary. In reality, the actions she could take were far simpler than she had initially expected.

After all, if the enemy needed to keep watch upon them, that left only a finite number of locations for them to be located. It truly was just a matter of narrowing down the options.

* * *

 **Interlude 06**

 _In that case, let's talk for a bit._

That was what she had said.

"I never did introduce myself, come to think of it." With a smile, she clapped her hands together. "My name is Kizuna Kanon. Call me whatever you feel like. Kanon-chan. Kizuna-san. I've heard it all before."

But, a simple complication was all that was needed to stunt an intention. Conversations were never meant to be one-sided. Dialogue doesn't function when one side walls up.

"And you're Kihara Enshuu—a soul who was never allowed to become whole."

But, walls are never completely impenetrable. All it takes is a single push in a vulnerability to let things begin to crumble. Though there were experiments within the city that tried to quantify the existence of the soul, they never truly went anywhere. A concept so unscientific should not have been able to pierce through one qualified to hold the name 'Kihara'.

To one qualified to carry that name.

The young girl who was not qualified to be called 'Kihara' shuddered, clutching harder at the blanket that rested upon her, and brought her knees and legs inwards before her arms wrapped around. A part of her wanted so badly to violently reject the words that were being said, not just because of the unscientific nonsense that was a part of it.

"But it's not like that's your fault. Nor is it even something one could call a crime or sin." The young woman with vibrant pink hair and eyes picked herself off the chair she sat on and planted herself firmly next to Enshuu, letting herself touch shoulders with the young girl.

As Kanon made contact, Enshuu recoiled even further. While she hadn't moved out of the spot she had been when she woke up, there was a clear convulsion that girl had every time Kanon spoke or approached.

This wasn't some ability she was facing. She wasn't convulsing because she had been fighting off some Esper power. In fact, she knew quite well that this young woman's Esper power was not even being used at that moment.

It was psychological. It was instinctual. Something deep within Kihara Enshuu's mind screamed at her to reject everything that was being said to her. But, what for?

Was it rejecting that reality? It couldn't be. Kihara Enshuu had long since known that she was hardly complete—that she was not one qualified to become a Kihara due to her circumstances. That much was something she wore, dangling from her neck on full display. That was why she supplemented herself with the thought patterns of the Kiharas as well as others. It was something she industriously displayed regardless of how idiots who viewed her came to interpret it.

"That doesn't matter." Her voice remained soft and fragile as she made her feeble attempts to say something. "It's not something I try to hide. I'm not a whole as a Kihara. I was never qualified to become a Kihara due to the circumstances. That's why I wear those around my neck."

She pointed towards the devices that had been left sitting on a dresser.

"That, you have been." Kanon smiled, getting back up and positioning herself in front of Enshuu, so as to look her in the eye. It was an expression Enshuu could not help but call warm, but unfamiliar. It was different from the type of smile Kamijou Touma and the others showed her. "And that is a truly wonderful thing."

"That's meaningless. Whether one can count it as wonderful is not a matter of value." The girl clutched tighter as she spoke. "It just is. There's nothing like good or evil to it. It's just reality." There was no reason to ascribe a characteristic like wonderfulness to her roundabout methodology. Such an idea was ultimately meaningless as reality was what it was and nothing more.

Those were the same words she had uttered to Kamijou Touma not even a few hours prior. The words of a girl who had constantly rejected salvation on her behalf would continue to do so. No meager attempts at comforting words would work to change that.

"Is it really?" Kihara Enshuu, having kept her gaze down slowly raised her gaze as Kanon spoke up. "I don't think so. There's no way that any of that could be meaningless. Reality is cruel and heartless. It attempts to strip meaning from everything. When laid bare, things just seem to be."

Despite her initial words and much to Enshuu's confusion, Kanon seemed to be simply agreeing with everything that she had said. The girl raised her head ever more slightly, cocking it to the side as her eyes matched the blunt confusion she was bearing.

"Espers live life imparting their personal reality onto the world. We take the unobserved reality that exists in a multivalent state and force it into a single observable one of our choice." She displayed her empty hand in front of Enshuu.

Her head nodded forward somewhat and jerked back as she gritted her teeth. Her fingers, her hand, her wrist, and her elbow all began to straighten out at an absurd amount. The human body's joints had numerous ligaments that were meant to limit movements to prevent the strain of muscles and prevent the body from contorting into a detrimental state. These very movements looked to threaten those very ligaments meant to keep the body in lock-step.

And it stopped. That unnatural extension cut out and Kizuna's head ceased the nauseated nodding off she had been in before looking back to Enshuu with that same gentle, unfamiliar smile.

"That's what it means to be an Esper. Some would argue it's like forcing your own delusions onto the world and they may have a point. But, human beings have been doing that kind of thing since their very birth. Running by their flawed perceptions. Deriving that so-called 'meaningless' value. Creating the observable world of their choices." With the hand that she had only just contorted, she petted Enshuu's head. "But, we're all here. Despite our incompleteness, we struggle, we step forward, and we impart value. We're still here. It doesn't matter if it's reality or not. I think the fact that you can walk with your head held high is a wonderful thing and we can make that a reality if you wish."

Kihara Enshuu was a girl who stood on the very line that divided those who could be called humans from those who were called Kiharas. She was a precarious creature who could be considered both, yet neither. All it would take would be a single proper push to have her collapse into one or the other if she preferred. But, that cat box would remain forever shut as she lived in that unstable, divalent state reminiscent of the transition state of a chemical reaction.

She was fragmented. Partial. Far from whole in either way. Even as a mesh of those two fractioned sides, she was still not something that could be called whole. Yet, she remained that way on her own volition.

One could call it unsightly to walk as such a fragmented existence. But, one could also call it beautiful in its own right. All it would need was a single proper push in one direction.

And so that girl's head once again rose. It rose until her eyes were locked with Kanon's.

"Just keep on living as you do." Kanon tapped her forehead against Enshuu's as she continued to speak. "Even if the Kihara family may not accept you. Even if the world of humans standing in the light may not accept you. We all will accept you regardless of who you are."

Kihara Enshuu still found herself shuddering. She found herself trying to reject whatever she had heard, but somehow…

It had lessened.

It wasn't those nonscientific terms that made her shiver.

It was something far, far more primal.

"You were never granted a childhood that was conducive to either world. Even if you were grateful to the man who 'raised' you and wanted to show what you could do with the inspiration he neglected to stifle, you lacked something."

Kanon got back up, standing back next to Enshuu and resting the young girl's head upon her chest.

It was something that she could have never received when she had grown up. It was a gentle warmth that threatened to lure her into complacency.

"So, you can stay with us. I can promise you the home that you never found."

The girl's consciousness seemed to fade away as the warmth of Kanon's embrace continued to engulf her.

In those last moments before her consciousness finally faded out, a single word popped to mind. The reason she had felt such abject rejection. The entity she had lacked. The identity of the warmth she had never experienced but felt such a primal understanding of.

Mother.

* * *

 **A/N: At long last, we've finally hit the fabled land of Chapter 6. Ugh, that timing did not go as expected. I had hoped to have this done before I did my board exam but I'm already two months into hospital rotations. But, here it is. I've finally finished writing Chapter 6. Before I go any further with personal chapter notes and the like, I'll do review responses.**

 **[whwsms: The snowball has been set in motion. It can only keep on picking up more snow as it rolls down the hill so I hope you don't get disappointed when the chaos unfolds even further than it already has. Ayu's hardly done at this stage.]**

 **[Mr?: And with that, I've finally put in a significant Enshuu scene. She's back~**

 **Given the Biohackers SS cover, Seria would have also been a good fit. But, as far as what I was going for and the course I want Ayu to take through the story, Junko fit a lot better. To a certain extent, the two of them were foils of each other given that they came from the same place. Trying to draw contrast between how the two of them moved forward and coped with the aftermaths of the same situations was well worth it and honestly draws a lot of potential for where Ayu's character can go since she has a cage she need to escape from her on her own. Between Accelerator, Touma, Ayu, Kuroyoru, and so much more, their fractured psyches all have a lot of routes left unexplored. Each has their own route to maturity that they need to travel.**

 **The world of the children and the pressure they have been placed under is truly horrifying. Here's to hoping our new board chairman and his trash squid make things better.]**

 **[Guest: That was...originally an idea. :|]**

 **[Rajarshi Sarkar: Ahahaha. I'd like to think I've taken a page out of Kamachi's book of absurdities but I haven't even hit the tip of the iceberg. Explanations for why Ayumu was able to enter the Imaginary Number District among other things will come and hopefully they'll be satisfying. I do find it amusing that Touma wandering with two girls is so surprising, though. Heh.]**

 **[Crack Shipping Guy: To a certain extent, you can call it my headcanon, but everything in that interlude is based on what I inferred from NT11 and the flashbacks in Astral Buddy. Given the announcement of the Biohackers SS, we'll see how right I was, but I'll be sticking with this interpretation of Ayu's character since it explains her actions and words quite nicely.**

 **To an extent, like Accelerator, Umidori hasn't fully escaped it. The Darkness of Academy City has left such an impact on both of them that they both still have their attachments to that world, be it a heightened sensitivity to it or a lack of purpose or sense of self now that they've been detached. To where will these arcs go, only time will tell.]**

 **[Healthcare (Dammit. Didn't realize your name would get censored by FFN): You should keep reading NT! Get through NT11 for some context~]**

 **With this, everyone is seeing some action. When looking at things in retrospect, the Touma portion of the entire encounter was the one that had changed the most from its initial conception. The initial concept had Touma crashing into Kongou at the start instead of Kanon. Not to mention there was a bit of an accidental pervert moment that had been axed before it even made it to the cutting room floor. Initially, Kongou and Kamijou were supposed to try and protect a young girl and fight the Enemy Blaster before it was revealed that the one they were protecting was Kanon. Needless to say, I came to realize that it was just a roundabout way to progress. Not to mention, a young girl holding that mother position would just be weird. The series already has enough little girls.**

 **Though, I've finally begun to reveal the one thing that I intended to make Kanon feel different from most dark side villains-maternity. That isn't to say that she isn't actually a mother. (She's college-aged. She can't have that many children who are able to drive trucks and pilot powered suits.) But, she fills in the role of the mother position to all of the 'children' she has taken in. While this may echo Kiyama from Railgun to some extent, I tried to write in things that would distinguish them as characters. The concept of the teacher and the concept of the mother and the roles they play are very different, after all. Even if they can look similar on the surface.**

 **Though Maria quickly ruled out technology, characters like Kihara Ransuu would be a possible explanation for this kind of situation too. Granted, it's not like she knows of every Kihara in existence.**

 **We're nearing the end of the second act of the story. Just one more chapter left. Just when you think the story has already hit its Abyss/Death & Rebirth phase, we will go even further down. The chaos has hit its next fever pitch so let's all wait and watch how things go from here. Hopefully, the absurdity of next chapter's ending will make some semblance of sense. **

**With that, I leave you with a cute little omake I came up with during the process of writing this. I was originally planning on placing this at the end of next chapter, but I'm not a fan of whiplash and at least any whiplash here will be less.**

 **Thanks to Mr? and Healthcare for acting as my betas. You guys were great~**

 **Till the next time we meet, I lay down my pen. Let's hope I'm a bit more timely with the next chapter (though surgery rotations will probably beg to differ).**

 **NT22R was wonderful, though, wasn't it? As a lover OT1, I couldn't be more happy with it~**

* * *

 **Omake**

 _GAAAAAAAAH! I'M SUCH AN IDIOT!_

In the middle of a Tokiwadai dormitory room, a girl in a Tokiwadai uniform, despite how late at night it was, paced back and forth between the two beds situated on either side. She was scratching at her head, distraught over a single fact.

 _I CAN'T BELIEVE I WENT TO THE HOSPITAL AFTER HE WAS DISCHARGED!_

Misaka Mikoto was clearly frustrated. The idiot who she had last seen in Denmark had been discharged from the hospital. She had made numerous attempts to go see him since she had returned but to no avail. At least, that's what she told herself.

What really happened was that she was told once that he was still unconscious and was not accepting any visitors. Any further attempts went as far as walking to near the entrance of the hospital before pacing a few times and then walking out.

Yes, it was truly agonizing.

Her roommate sitting on her bed against the wall seemed to be biting at her bedsheets angrily though Mikoto seemed to be largely ignorant.

 _Moreover, I can't help but feel like there's something going on that he should be involving me in!_

"That's it! I'm going!" That truly entitled young girl turned around from the window she had been facing when she said that and walked straight towards the door.

But, the girl didn't realize that she had opened up the maws of hell until it was too late.

"Going where, Misaka?"

The visage of a bespectacled lady with a stern glare and a suit entered her gaze bit by bit until her whole form stood clear as crystal before her.

"U-um..."

The girl could do nothing more than stutter as fear seemed to permeate her very being.

"Well. Going to bed, of course! Good night!"

With a quick motion, she closed the door before jumping into bed, hiding under her blanket, and squeezing her pillow with her arms.

 _IT'S NOT FAIR!_

The girl screamed in her head as tears streamed from her eyes.

Sometimes life was truly unfair.

Sometimes, people just needed to stay out of the events they didn't belong anywhere near.

Sometimes, the gods of page-time were cruel.


	8. Chapter 07

**Chapter 07**

 **The Liberated Collapse The Paradigm.**

 _ **DESCENT_TO_MADNESS_(HELL).**_

 **1**

They followed her—the girl who had said that she had fallen in love with Kamijou Touma before—but she neglected to explain anything so far. She was probably planning to explain everything as they ran since it seemed time was of the essence, but there was an entirely different pull that Index had felt from her.

It was not like Index had been with Kamijou Touma for most of his life. She was not a childhood friend or someone who had been with him for most of the fifteen years of his life. Compared to people like his neighbor and best friend Tsuchimikado, she had been with him for what could only be a paltry five months. Prior to his memory loss (which was something she had only learned of very recently), she had known him for no more than a week.

What kind of person Kamijou Touma had been.

What kind of life he had lead before they had met.

What his hopes and dreams were.

What his despair was.

Index could not honestly say she was able to read any of that up to the time the boy lost his memories. That door was closed when all was said and done. To a certain extent, she had been fine with that. The boy that she had been living with for many months and the boy who had saved her were one in the same. Even if she would not ever learn about the kind of person that boy was before his memories were violently crushed, she would still be with him and learn of who he was now. As long as they could continue being together, that was all that mattered. That was what she had resigned herself to.

But, what stood before her right now—who she was running behind—was a remnant of his past that she had thought closed off. Moreover, she was supposedly someone who had fallen in love with him. The door had been creaked open, even if slightly.

"Were you lovers?" The first to speak, however, was Othinus, with the most blunt question possible.

"E-Eh?! Are you even allowed to ask that kind of thing straight up?!" The girl in glasses blurted out in shock as she quickly comprehended the little fairy's curt words, leaving a flustered expression and a strong blush on her face.

In stark contrast, Index did nothing more than continue to run. There wasn't much more she could ask now that the first bombshell had been dropped. It wasn't like she wasn't wondering that herself. But, what she wanted to know was something far, far deeper than something as surface as previous lovers.

"If only it was something so pristine." Ayu kept an awkward smile while giving off an obvious self-deprecating laugh. "We were never something so intimate like lovers. I was just a wretch of a girl who dug wounds into him that would never leave him, until the day he was snuffed out."

"So, you know…?" Index asked, finally finding something that she could.

"Yeah. I don't know the details about the incident, but I know that he took some head trauma on July 28th and lost all of his memories."

Index, unable to forget the reality of the incident, even if she was never fully conscious for it, started to drop her gaze as she heard Ayu's understanding of the incident. The harsh reality was evident. The boy who had saved her was gone from this world and the remnants of him left in her place were tied to her. It was all Index's own—

"It isn't your fault." Mitsuari didn't look back once as she attempted to cut through the self-destructive spiral of thoughts Index had clearly been falling into. "It isn't any single person's fault. Neither yours. Nor the people who were chasing you around. Nor mine. Nor his. It was the end result of circumstances. That is all."

Despite her words, Index still kept her gaze down. Catching this going on behind her, Mitsuari Ayu stopped and turned to face back to Index as the rain continued to pour down onto them.

"Do you remember what he was like when you first met him?"

"He was lively, energetic. Despite how much trouble I was in, he was always willing to throw everything on the line to help me. To make me feel happy. To save me." Index stopped speaking as she felt her mouth go dry. It was as if her body didn't want her to speak any further, but even so… "It was saddening to see." The girl clutched at her habit with her free hand and forced those words out.

Kazakiri tilted her head and frowned. It was saddening? When one always told the tale of a gallant hero who had saved them, who they had become close to, she didn't think those were the words one would normally use to describe that hero's actions. Perhaps it was her young age and naivete to blame, but she had always assumed that the strong image of the hero's back as he faced danger head on would always be the most prominent characteristic—one that elevated the strength of their presence in the mind of the person they had saved. At the very least, that was how she had seen the boy who they were talking about.

One who saved her time and time again without ever once showing a genuine, caring smile for her. One who had comforted her when she had felt that she had no worth as anything but a monster and looked at her as a friend. One who she had, at one point, returned the favor to, even if only in part, in that starry Russian nightscape.

"It was like he was longing for something." Index struggled to remember those parts of him that she could see, not because she had forgotten—eidetic memory would not be that kind to her—but because she could not bear to see that boy's sadness. "Whether he was gazing at his right hand, the situation, or himself, he always seemed like he was longing for something. And he always felt like he was missing something that would help him smile. He would throw himself into danger and come back hurt at the end of it all. It was saddening to see."

To Index, what else could it look like beyond someone slowly walking into a noose and tightening around their neck?

"I'm, in part, to blame as well for that." Index, having heard those words, looked back up at Ayu only to see that she, herself, had also shifted her gaze down to the ground. "That boy is unable to bear to see someone's tragedy through to the end. He was always cursed with misfortune. That's why when I attempted suicide and he thought I was dead, I'm sure he cursed that misfortune that prevented him from reaching me. He cursed himself, who was incapable of preventing that tragedy. When it played out to the end, it was more than he could bear."

Though she had taken the blame, Index could say without hesitation, though, that she was hardly the only cause of it all. Many times, she had seen the boy run off head first into some incident or another just to save someone who couldn't even cry out 'help me' and come back battered with variable results. She knew just how much those failures hurt him. She knew just how much he would be willing to crawl through the mud to prevent even a single tragedy.

If that was the case, then just how long had he been running through this same sort of cycle before she had met him? How much had he been breaking himself on a consistent basis before then?

Neither she, nor anyone else here, would probably ever find out the answer to that.

All they had were the moments in which they did know him.

That was why.

"In those moments before he lost all of his memories, you were there. Do you think he was happy in the end?"

That was why Mitsuari Ayu could honestly ask that to Index. After all, only she and the now lost portions of Kamijou Touma could ever know that answer. Was that boy who always cursed his misfortune able to attain some form of happiness in those last moments?

Index was hardly even conscious through most of those last moments. But, even through all of that, she could remember a certain feeling throughout it—a warmth that had chased after her, pierced through the darkness that had enclosed her, pulled her out of that pitch-black hell, and finally embraced her.

The young nun clenched her fist before her heart and gazed into Mitsuari's eyes. "He was. I think at the end of it all, he was truly smiling."

Those were the firm words of the girl who had become his central pillar and maintained that position. Those were the firm words of the girl for whom he was a central pillar. It was a wonderful brilliance that Mitsuari Ayu had never been able to form and maintain. Perhaps, that was why she was never able to hold or maintain that special position with him.

"I see." Without a hint of either dismissal or regret, she smiled as she said those two words. She had never gotten to see the final moments of the Kamijou Touma that she had known, but that part of him seemed to still remain in his heart even this many months later. The boy who she had hurt had finally found some form of happiness. "Then, there's no reason for you to feel at blame for it at all. I'm sure that he would have felt the same way. After all, you're still there for him now."

"Thanks." It was truly a brilliance Mitsuari Ayu could never reach, but perhaps she could at least add a bit to it.

* * *

 **2**

Accelerator closed his eyes.

They had failed to become something like him. They had become something the considered lesser and far more muddy than him. They had been born into the sin of weakness and chose to ascend beyond that even if they could not become virtuous enough to sheathe their madness. They would mar themselves with evil to protect those who stood with them.

"Utter bullshit."

As he fell, a sensation started in his back and went to his brain. He was no longer able to see anything but, there was a sense that was far more reliable than his sight—the AIM Diffusion Field that created the reflection barrier that was the centerpiece of his status as Academy City's Number 1.

As soon as he felt _it_ , he grabbed it. Whatever had attempted to smash into his back was solid, so he grabbed hold of it with his left hand and pulled as he landed with his feet on the ground. He didn't need much force. All it took a simple flick of his wrist and whatever he had grabbed would fly towards him.

With his empty right, he clenched his fist and threw it forward.

There was a crunch and a squelch as whatever he had pulled towards him splattered at contact with his fist. Whatever tension he had felt in his left hand had ceased as whatever it was ceased to function.

Opening his eyes, Accelerator finally saw the identity of the assailing object (or at least one of them) that had been attacking him. Though large chunks of it had been blown out, it could clearly be seen as something that resembled an octopus—a large top-heavy sphere from which numerous tentacle-like appendages, one which he was holding in his left hand, propped out of. The parts of the sphere that had not been blown out had an eyeball embedded into it that looked to have once been very mobile before power was cut off by its destruction.

It was a fearsome device, once used by Mitsuari Ayu, known as FIVE_Over (Out_Sider) Modelcase_"MENTAL_OUT".

Though he was unaware of what it was or how it functioned, he could fancy a guess that it worked on some psychological manner based on an eye to visual cortex path. Admittedly, it was definitely one of the smarter methods chosen by any of the idiots who had come after him with the intent of defeating him.

Having gathered as much information as he needed, Accelerator closed his eyes and exhaled before tossing the wrecked FIVE_Over with his left hand in a random direction, paying mind to the fact that the throw had taken out another one or two of the machines given the presence of crunching, clanging, and squelching sounds. He had seen all that he needed to. If the enemy needed to use his sight to affect him, he would simply close off that avenue.

"It's utter bullshit." Before he made any further attempts at attacking, he derided what he had heard from his assailant. "You have a peace you still want to attain? You'll become a demon for that purpose? Didn't I say it already? You're nothing special. Because you see the world in such a stupid lens, you'll stay stuck on that ridiculous precipice. Demon? Villain? That shit is meaningless."

He stamped his foot onto the ground he had reclaimed. Cracks spread as flecks of asphalt split off and flew around him. As he heard those words from his enemy, he could not help but remember one thing. He felt like he was staring into a cruel mirror that displayed the past.

"You've tied yourself down with that so much that you can't even see the forest for the trees anymore. To put it bluntly, you're a fucking moron."

He had been told that he should struggle in the way that had seemed hardest for him. To not take the easy path.

He was hardly the type that could ever truly call himself a hero. At least, that's what he used to think. But, even from that muck-stained position, he still became a hero for a certain girl. He could finally take a step forward in a life that stagnated.

Moreover, a certain boy had once taken the brunt of the world's hatred to save a girl who had been the object of that visceral emotion. Moreover, that certain boy had once reached a hand into the hell that Accelerator had created for himself to pull him even just a bit further out of that hell.

It would be easy to wipe such an ugly reminder of the past out of existence—to overwhelm and annihilate with the violence that was ultimately fitting of the Number 1.

The Number 1 raised his right hand up to the air and rested the nail of his middle finger against the tip of his thumb and gave a savage smile. "But, we can fix that right here."

He couldn't say he knew much when it came to saving someone. Last Order and Misaka Worst had honestly been special circumstances. There was no guide to it. There were no simple answers. There was no right and wrong that was consistent across the board. There was only one thing he could truly say for certain.

A person didn't need a special position to reach out their hand to someone who needed help. All he had to do was do it.

All it took was a flick of his finger. A single shard of asphalt that had landed against his nail was immediately thrown about, ricocheting into other fragments that had been freed from gravity. Like a scattershot of asphalt, numerous FOOS units were pierced through the magnetic monitoring dust that had camouflaged them even in the air. As they all lost some fragment of their functionality, they all fell down onto the road that lay in fragments.

For once, that destructive power would bring salvation. The monster in white came to one sole decision.

The path of the 'villain' was one that was already tread one time too many.

* * *

 **3**

At a certain point, there was not much else one could do besides fight back. When running away, it was clear that the prey would be doomed to fail if it could not endure longer than its predator. As his misfortune would have it, his enemy was a Powered Suit that would keep running without ever experiencing the fatigue from lactic acid accumulation that a flesh and blood human being would. Moreover, he had to help the person who had been pulled into this mess with him.

At some point, it was inevitable that they had to attack or they would be drawn into a battle of attrition that would result in the worst possible ending.

The monster that was calibrated for operations in a snowy climate slowly approached, its individual feet clanking onto the solid floor as it approached ever closer. Touma took a deep breath as a cold sweat ran down his back. Each one of his hands clutched onto something as he kept his position behind the counter.

The idea was something that could work theoretically. At least, that's what Kizuna had said when he pointed out the possibility. But, her attitude was not fully supportive of it. Kamijou Touma was not the type of person who would ever rely on luck to work. After all, he knew better than anyone how his own luck tended to operate. He could not rely on Imagine Breaker to minimize the fallout. But, there was one skill Kamijou Touma could absolutely rely on.

The two of them remained silent as the sounds of clanking grew louder and louder, one-by-one. No matter how much he wanted to take deep breaths in and out, he slowed his breathing down to a crawl as the monster continued to step forward.

Next to him, Kanon kept her eyes peeled with bated breath on a security mirror that reflected the image of what was outside of that electronics store. The first of its legs had finally come into view. Next came two more. As each foot continued to enter the image on the mirror, Kanon slowly raised her hand in front of her.

As much as she seemed to not be used to this kind of thing and as much as she was against the plan, she had placed herself into a heavy focus on the task at hand, much to Touma's appreciation. Perhaps it was only natural for a college-aged woman to be like this.

"Now," she mouthed as she pointed upwards to the mirror. As the machine had finally come into view, Kamijou picked up the object in his right hand and tossed it out towards the Enemy Blaster. As the incoming object flew ever closer, the Enemy Blaster pointed its smoothbore gun towards it and fired one single round.

It had automatically fired straight at that object that would not have been deemed a threat by any human being—a commercial fire extinguisher. The force of the shot caused the object to split apart with an almost equal force in all direction as the white, mist-like substance spread out, obscuring its cameras. The pieces flew everywhere, hitting various joints and kinks in the skeleton of the suit. The explosion pushed into the suit, further straining those joints.

But that was not all.

With his left hand, Kamijou Touma hopped over the counter. Clenching a metal pipe in his, now gloved, right hand, he ran towards the Powered Suit that seemed almost stunned by the makeshift distraction tactic that he had created.

He could not really see where he was going. He could only rely on finding the silhouette that was now obscured by the extinguisher's mist and his memory of the position of all of the merchandise shelves that were in the store. So, he ran, rushing around shelves until the beast's silhouette was no longer obscured.

His onslaught was nothing short of reckless. He was within the range of that monstrous gun's barrel. He could be shot dead any second. But, that was why he had to act.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The boy screamed as he pushed the metal pipe into the shoulder joint of the arm holding the smoothbore gun. It was hardly an elegant move, but the pipe sank in as the structural defects created by the fire extinguisher gave way. As he pushed further and further, he could feel the sensation of various plastic circuit boards dampening his push and breaking until he could push no further, blocked by metal.

The wait as the mist cleared could probably considered some of the longest few seconds in that boy's life. Had he succeeded? Would he still be shot down? If he aimed wrong or hit the wrong parts, he would probably become swiss cheese in an instant.

But, the clearing of the mist only heralded silence.

The Powered Suit had stopped moving.

Kamijou Touma finally took the deep breath he had been holding back as he fell back onto his butt and rested on the palms of his hand.

"You're absolutely insane, you know that?" The pink-haired woman popped up from behind the counter as she walked up to the boy celebrating victory from beneath the corpse of his fallen enemy. "But I'll admit you got us out of that mess, even if everything you did was reckless beyond belief."

As she let herself smile warmly at Kamijou Touma, he turned over to the towering monstrosity that had died standing. "Sorry about that. Things tend to go that way a lot for me."

Before he could push his apology any further, he felt a hand land upon his spiky hair and ruffle it a bit as it rubbed gently at his scalp. "Obscuring its vision with the fire extinguisher, using the shrapnel and the recoil from the explosion to cause a skeletal defect, and breaking through the accessory processing systems and weapons control for it. It was a ridiculous gamble, no doubt, but you did it quite wonderfully. The results speak for themselves. So, don't worry about it."

When it came down to it, that was Kamijou Touma's true skill in that type of situation—the capability to coolly disrupt the enemy and carve out a niche from which he could attack through. Though it may not have been one for a so-called 'normal high school boy' to be proud of, it was one that had gotten him through numerous hells and back as far as he could remember.

"Thanks." While he would not say it out loud, he could not deny that he felt a little comfort in the young woman's words. Truly the gap between the high school student and the college student was wider than he had imagined if she was able to make him feel that comfort without any resistance on his part.

"Is it tough on you?"

"Hmm?"

"You seem to be willing to throw your life away quite easily. There were probably a number of other things you could have done to save yourself and separate from a complete stranger like me without doing any of what you did, you know?"

Kamijou looked down to the ground. He had tried to push himself to think with more concern for his own well-being when he had fought Othinus in the shifting and fluctuating phases. He had thought that he had finally been able to care for himself, but old habits truly died hard if they didn't die from all of the deaths he experienced. "If I did that, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. If I left you behind or separated, who knew what could have happened to you? Even if you're a stranger, it's not the end of the world if I get scuffed up a bit trying to help someone."

Despite how earnest those words were, Kizuna Kanon could honestly say something very biting about them. _They were truly sad._

* * *

 **4**

Kuroyoru Umidori was once the leader of the underground organization calling itself the Freshmen. While it no longer had what could be called a glowing reputation, as far as that industry was concerned, she was still the leader of it. Though the same could not be said of some leaders, she truly understood everything that was used in the domain of that organization.

As such, it was only inevitable that she was aware of the mechanisms of the weapons used by the deceased Silver Cross Alpha. One of the weapons in his arsenal was known as Bee Launcher. It was a supplementary suit that he had used when she had intended to kill Fremea only a couple of weeks prior. It was designed as the control hub and launching point for over a hundred Edge Bees.

But, most importantly, the Bee Launcher was not a combat suit. Despite being a Powered Suit which could launch over a hundred autonomous killer drones, that was its only weaponry. That was the necessity born from its user needing to control and program the Edge Bees from it.

Kuroyoru Umidori could not consistently destroy the Edge Bees so cleanly as she had done before. The detached weaponry had begun swarming around her so even half a moment's delay was all that was needed for the trap hooks to spring.

It was inevitable that fallen members of the swarm would start throwing out their traps.

But none of it mattered anymore.

Kuroyoru Umidori's ability Bomber Lance was the unholy matrimony of nitrogen manipulation and the Number 1's offensive thought patterns and tactics. But specialization did not necessitate incompetence in the non-specialized fields. When one thinks of air, the most common things attributed tended to be oxygen and carbon dioxide. But, in reality, the most common substance in air was nitrogen.

Even if her ability focused on the creation of nitrogen spears, that ability drew in nitrogen from the air around her. That air moving could cause small gusts of wind. Add on the numerous spears she could create from the cyborg hands she sprung out and those small gusts could add up or even create something more precise.

It was like surrounding herself with a spiked dome. No matter how many of those traps were spring, the various hooks would be knocked away. No matter how many Edge Bees were thrown at her, they would inevitably end up crushed. No matter how many of those hooks littered the ground like caltrops, they would never pierce her.

"There you are."

Having taken control over the hellscape that the section of the underground mall had become, she followed the direction that the flood of Edge Bees had come from. So, it didn't take long for her to find the location of the Bee Launcher that acted as its hub sitting so brazenly in a wide-open area.

But, having seen Kuroyoru approaching, the machine (or whoever was operating it) took the optimal option and began to move in reverse while continuing to release further Edge Bees.

"Don't you fucking dare!" With her two arms and half of her remaining cyborg arms, she slammed the numerous spears into the ground, causing numerous fragments of what had once been the ground she tread to fly into the air. With the other half of her hands, she manipulated the wind to 'grab' at the numerous Edge Bees flying towards her and threw them back. As pieces of shrapnel hit the drones, they broke apart, leaving their trap hooks flying while others remained intact as they hurdled into the escaping Launcher.

"You shits are not going to escape after making a mockery of the Freshmen." The Edge Bees grabbed against the Launcher and came apart. The hooks flew and surrounded the Launcher. The shrapnel smashed against the Launcher.

And after being wrapped around like a child playing with a fine string, the escaping suit was ground to a halt.

This mockery would absolutely not stand.

Kuroyoru Umidori surrounded herself with her spears as she made one last mad dash at the Launcher with spear in hand.

"So, take your fucking just deserts already."

As she ran past it, she swung across with the arm in her lance, slicing the machine in two.

Without even a hint of lag, as soon as that blade of air had cleanly passed through the Bee Launcher, the various Edge Bees ceased operation and rained from the air. As one landed and rolled to her feet, Kuroyoru clicked her tongue and stamped on the confounded object.

No matter what, she knew one thing.

This mockery would absolutely not stand.

* * *

 **5**

Even as the door opened, the young girl stayed staring at the numerous screens in the security room. She had been tracked down. But, none of that mattered to her. The objective had almost been reached.

"You're the one causing all of this." The one who had opened the door and shone the light of the outside world onto the young girl spoke, declaring that she had found who had been looking for. The one making that declaration was a young girl in ringlet curls and an outfit that was reminiscent of something that would be found on the streets of Akihabara.

It just needed to be an area from which the culprit could safely monitor the positions of everyone who was trapped in that lifeless cage created in the underground mall—in other words, security rooms within the area under the people-clearing effect. From there, it was not too hard to narrow the location down. Security rooms were hardly placed in every corner of the building and were meant to be more of a safe location in comparison to security boxes that were found throughout. It was just a matter of going through the small list until she hit the right one.

"Yes...I guess this is enough. I'm sure this was enough for your answer." The young girl muttered to herself, keeping her eyes on one specific screen before turning to face Maria. Her eyes widened as she laid eyes upon the girl. She was only a few centimeters shorter than Maria, kept her black hair at shoulder-length, and wore a pink hoodie with a bunny motif for the hood. Her sleeves extended to the point where they went over her wrists and beyond her fingertips by at least a few centimeters. Her skirt was as short as the skirts she had seen girls in Tokiwadai wearing despite the chilly weather but, she seemed to be wearing two layers of stockings over her legs if the mismatched designs superimposed—one on top of the other—seemed to indicate, and her boots reached up to her knees and showed off a plethora of buckles.

She was...young—perhaps almost as young as Maria herself was. While it shouldn't have been a surprise given the things she had seen before in Baggage City, she couldn't help but find that fact leaving her stomach churning.

"Yes, yes~ Congratulations! You have finally found me!" Her face beamed with a grin as she clapped her sleeved hands together. "So what, though?"

Maria frowned as she had heard that.

"You figured you could put an end to this if you found the culprit. Call me Kurumi, by the way~ You figured that things would end once you found me. But, you had no idea what to do what to do when you found me. From here, is there much you can do? Was all of this just meant to slake your desire for an answer?"

The girl calling herself Kurumi was hardly wrong. There was an element of tunnel vision to it, but Maria had moved for the sake of finding an answer. She had accurately deduced that the culprit was an Esper and concurrently deduced the location that esper was hiding in.

 _Well…_

Though the girl was taunting her, it was hardly like she had no options. If she knocked Kurumi out, the effect would likely come to an end.

But that would draw people back in and innocents would become hurt on that unforgiving battlefield of war machines.

She could try and get answers from Kurumi as to what was going on.

But, she was hardly an interrogator. Nor was she the type to make…

"Oh, perhaps, you'll finally let Kihara Byouri's influence blossom within you and try to make me give up~"

It was something beyond a chill that ran across Kumokawa Maria's skin as she heard that name. She felt her skin crawl and her hair begin to stand on end.

"What." The maid-in-training's voice transformed into an uncharacteristic growl. Her body tensed up as she seemed to almost signal a transformation into an angry predator.

"To be fair, it's not like you haven't been doing that from the start. You chased Kihara Kagun down in order to bring him home, but in a way, you were hoping to make him 'give up' on his plotted course. The incident that forced Kihara Kagun's exodus was orchestrated by her. A boy whom she had made to give up. A man who she desired to utterly destroy. Who's to say that you too, weren't influenced by her? You chased after him even to the moment of his death like a tracking device who gave up on turning back. And in the end, you were the last person seen by his corpse. Ah!"

Kurumi tapped her wrapped fist onto her wrapped palm as if she had come to a brilliant idea. She made a distinct gesture by her neck with a smile. "Couldn't you say that in the end, you were the final, decisive noose Kihara Byouri had wrapped around that man's neck?"

The next thing she saw was the hidden territory beneath the maid-in-trainings skirt as her body was knocked to the side into a nearby table, causing all of the computers and stationery on the desk to fall, clang, and crash onto the ground. Maria had rushed up to and kicked Kurumi without hesitation. There was no ulterior motive. How could there be one to a simple act of violence?

Her mind had dyed a pure red as she landed the back of her foot against the girl's temple.

"SHUT UP, DAMMIT!" Maria roared as she mounted the fallen Kurumi and grabbed at the collar of her sweater. "YOU DON'T KNOW A DAMN THING ABOUT ANYTHING SO SHUT UP!"

She would shut her up. She would shut up this insolent mouth that dared to ever deny her efforts.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Kurumi, despite her position, broke out into laughter. She was amused. Yes, she was truly amused. "So, that's all it takes to shatter that pride and strength of yours, isn't it? Absolutely amazing!"

"I SAID SHUT UP!"

"Shhhh. It's alright. Don't be such a downer~" One of her hands wormed its way out of the sleeve it was contained in and gently caressed Maria's cheek. Despite the fact that she was on the ground. Despite the fact that Maria was physically on top of her. Maria felt chills as the girl's hand touched her and as she subsequently gazed back into her eyes. Despite the fact that she was only a few centimeters away from Kurumi's neck, it almost felt like a snake had slithered around her and was ready to sink its fangs straight into her jugular. "I'll tell you something neat~"

The snake had slowly opened its mouth.

"If we so wanted, we could have killed you almost instantaneously. With all of the Powered Suits in our arsenal, each and every one of you—Kuroyoru Umidori included—would be nothing more than bags of flesh and bones before our firepower. But, we didn't. So, what do you think our objective was in starting this attack, then?"

"W-what?"

"Three~ Two~ One~ Awww. Too bad. That wasn't the answer. We did it to separate the three of you. A well-trained group would have tried to reunite but you three were not that. You were a group who was only together by circumstance. Instead of trying to reunite, you stuck to the more evident route before you and split up. From the very start, every move you made was dancing in the palm of her hand~" Kurumi giggled as she pointed out the reason for their actions to Maria who could do more than blankly listen. As she restrained any further giggles, she raised her other hand, now freed from within her sleeves. "Question two~ And this is the big one so listen up! My Aversion Field works by causing everyone within a certain area due to an implantation of aversion. It's wide-reaching and can only be fine-tuned by not the radius by which I operate but by the number of people I whitelist from that. Now pay attention to this."

She finally let her hand off Maria's cheek as she used it to point to somewhere else: one of the many screens that had made up the walls of the security room. On it were two people who were before the ruins of the Enemy Blaster that had attacked them at the start. Sitting on the floor was the spiky-haired boy who she had separated from and standing by his side with a hand on his head was a pink-haired woman whom she had never met before.

"I've had failures with my whitelist before, but that was a failure to whitelist. I've never accidentally whitelisted someone. So, with that in mind. Who is the stranger there with him right now?"

Maria's hands clenched even harder at the young girl and her eyes widened with horror as she realized exactly what was going on. Why had they needed to separate the three of them? Why was there a stranger in this location where there shouldn't have been? What had been their objective in all of this?

"YES! YOU'VE GOT IT! I CAN TELL! YOU FINALLY REALIZED THE TRUTH EVEN IF IT'S TOO LATE TO DO A THING!" With a hiss and a crazed glare, that girl brought her hand back to Maria's cheek and pulled her own face in so close that their lips were almost touching. "Our objective all along was—"

* * *

 **6**

"Kamijou Touma…"

"We should probably get going." Kamijou Touma took off the glove on his hand and dropped it on the ground before standing himself back up. He had rested up enough and lingering in this place wasn't going to do him any favors so he waved Kizuna forward as he spoke. "I need to meet back up with the others at the rendezvous point and I need to get you to safety. We don't have much time."

There was no way of knowing what had happened to either Maria or Umidori but waiting where he had silenced the Enemy Blaster would only hurt him more than it helped. He was the one who had chosen the rendezvous point, after all, so it was up to him to live with that decision and see it through. "Let's go."

Before he even took his first step, though, he felt something poke onto his back before an all-too-familiar sensation rocked his body. Given how many times he had been attacked by Misaka Mikoto, how could he not recognize it? A high voltage-current ran through his body. He convulsed as he stood before he fell down face-first onto the ground.

Once he was on the ground, another familiar sensation rocked the inside of his brain—one reminiscent of spinning or motion sickness—before his body tensed up. No, that would have undersold what had really happened. His wrists and elbow straightened out and locked. His shoulder brought his arms to his side. His knees buckled. His hips locked. Every joint in his body seemed to lock into place as he was forced into an uncomfortable, unnatural position.

"You know, tasers don't really paralyze a person. As much as it's shown on TV and movies, that's just not their function. All they can really do is stun in the moments the leads are attached. Once they're gone, the target can just move around as normal...though usually after they shake off an uncomfortable feeling."

Kamijou's mind struggled to process what happened. The voice was of the young woman who he had been with. There was nobody else it could belong to. But that woman who had been acting weak and useless the whole time had attacked him? Even as she walked in front of his face and put the device that had shocked him back into her pocket, he couldn't really comprehend what had just happened.

"You look confused." Kizuna Kanon kneeled down in front of the fallen boy and placed her hand on the boy's chin to lift it up—a difficult task given the spasm-like contraction of his muscles. "It's understandable. The person you were working to help just stabbed you in the back and you have no idea why. But I think I can say a few words that might click everything into place."

She brought her face in close next to his ears and whispered. "It's a pleasure to meet you all. I am the mastermind you've been so desperately chasing." Yes, he had heard similar words only a few hours ago. They were the words that the person in the riding suit had said before.

"What have you done with Enshuu?"

"Ah, straight to the jugular with that one, huh?" Kanon raised her head back until she was looking down upon Kamijou but her face never once held any semblance of contempt nor superiority. Instead, she smiled down upon the boy like a mother to her newborn. "If you're worried about her safety, don't be. Ironically, she's probably far safer in our care than she was in her state of homelessness. She is hardly harmed. Merely with us."

The boy wanted to feel relief as he heard that but he was unable to. How could he trust her to be telling the truth? Even if some aspect of her made her someone he wanted to trust on instinct, logic stated that she had no reason to keep honest. But, there was not much he could do while he was stuck, rigid, on the ground.

"Where is she?"

"It's so cute how you think you're in a position to make demands~ But I'll sate that adorableness and tell you one thing. You'll be seeing her soon, so don't worry about it." Her smile began to change into one fitting for talking to a five year old rather than a newborn.

Unfortunately, that was not an answer—even if she was right that he was in no position to demand answers. Not one he could understand at least.

"Why...me?" He could no longer even afford to speak in coherent sentences as the vertigo became too much to bear, leaving his head throbbing and his consciousness waning as he forced, to less and less avail, himself to not fade to black.

"That's something I can definitely answer for you." The hand on his cheek came off as the fingers remained to trail up his jaw to his cheek. "You, Enshuu, and the rest of us share a common characteristic, Kamijou-kun. If I had to put it succinctly, you, too, are a fractured soul."

A fractured...soul?

"What...does..." But the boy could no longer maintain it as his last throes could no longer keep him from falling into the precipice of unconsciousness.

* * *

 **7**

Accelerator would have liked to know what to do from there, but he had no experience with this kind of thing. Saving people was Kamijou Touma's domain. As much as he thought to himself that maybe he could, for once, try to tread on that domain, he had no idea what the first step to do so even was.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do here?"

The boy stood in the center of the road littered by rain and the wreckage of what was once potent weaponry. As he had crushed the opposition's weaponry, all that remained was a stark silence. Not even a hint of the voice of the enemy he was fighting seemed to remain as he opened his eyes and glanced upon the wreckage.

His usual modus operandi tended to be to kill the irritant and be done with it, but he never realized just how much there was left to worry about if the intent wasn't to kill. What if he had accidentally killed the operator? What if he was injured and buried under all of the rubble?

He could have asked those questions, but as he scanned the wreckage, there was something that was clearly missing. The first powered suit that had initiated the attack was nowhere to be seen, neither in whole nor as part of the wreckage.

It either meant that it was still active or the wreckage was being camouflaged by the Out_Sider units. Either way, it meant that the operator was still alive—albeit unseen.

Accelerator clicked his tongue. He could no longer put himself on the initiative. If the enemy was out of sight, all he could do was wait until he saw another opening.

"Don't screw with me."

The voice echoed around that road on that rainy night.

"You think you can play the hero? Don't you dare push that wishy-washy tripe. I was right. You really have become a dull blade."

The anger in his voice never seethed as it reverberated throughout, much to Accelerator's dismay. If he had simply been knocked out, Accelerator could have picked him up from the rubble and questioned him. But, that didn't seem like it was going to be the case.

Especially with him going on about his dull blade nonsense.

"You think you're going to push your half-assed form of salvation onto me? On the rest of us?"

As if anger gave life to the various fragments of the FOOS that still had legs on them, they moved towards each other and interlocked with each other into an almost spiral staircase or tornado-like structure.

"Don't you dare look down at us from your lofty perch, you false king."

Accelerator raised his eyebrows as he heard the odd choice of words from the assailant. Between that and the odd form of effort the assailant seemed to be taking, he was nothing short of genuinely confused.

After all, there was nothing he, nor any esper or machine could do to Accelerator. Even if the entirety of the science side was thrown at him, he would inevitably end up on top. The fact that the opening that the operator had used to attack him before had been sealed was proof of that.

He need only use a single hand to collapse that effort. That was the strength of violence that Accelerator wielded. He placed his hand onto the base of the spiral rising into the air, ready to smash it in a single blow.

 _What?_ Accelerator's eyes widened. As soon as his hand made contact with the tower of Out_Siders, his body stopped moving. Stuck in a rigid form, he tried with no avail to move any muscle in his body. _What the hell is going on here?_

"King Sisyphus enacted trickery upon the gods and the world, one by one, absolving them of their dignity."

Even if the bleeding edge of technology and science was thrown against Accelerator, he would invariably win. But, one need not even creep outside of the sectioned world of science to find the solution hidden at the base.

"Even death failed to put an end to his trickery. So, other steps needed to be taken."

A certain young onmyouji had once said that magicians were kids with knives, kids who were crying and trembling for they had been forsaken by the world. Having sent their prayers to God in the heavens, they received no vindication and thus thrust themselves into the underground world of the occult.

Magic was something that could be activated without the intent of the caster so long as the conditions were in place. That was the grand design that had initiated Angel Fall, after all.

In that city, with those many children left downtrodden, even with the world split apart, it was only natural that the pieces coincidentally fit into place at least once.

"Fall to the eternal punishment and never reach the apex again."

It happened all too suddenly. The ground beneath Accelerator gave way as a great force seemed to stamp down from above. Even though he was fully conscious. Even though he could still reflect any vector, he could not fully reflect that great force as he smashed down through the asphalt. As he landed on his back, his head rocked as the world seemed to black out on him.

Within one blow, the Number One had fallen into the earth without a single hint of his consciousness remaining.

At the very top of the spiral structure, a phenomenon similar to sand being blown away revealed the form of the Modelcase_"RAILGUN" floating above it all. Parts of its armor had been stripped away and the bare circuitry left exposed in the rain sparked at irregular intervals. Beneath it all, the numerous Out_Siders that made up the helical tower also showed signs of further damage. Limbs with polymer films torn off. Machines left exposed. Gels left strewn around.

Despite Accelerator's initial onslaught, none of that new damage nor the damage on the sole unique suit came from him. All of it was freshly made, as if torn apart from the inside.

Though he may have suppressed it, the operator's speaker let out hints of panting breath.

"Just one more...to clean it all up..."

His words staggered. His voice, still seething with rage, split.

"King Sisyphus enacted trickery..."

A sizzling noise erupted as a purple wave of electricity cut through the rain and Out_Siders at the base and above the hole the punishment of the gods had created. The world in that location stayed obscured by the steam and gas created through intense heat and electrolysis. Numerous nails flew out and struck through the machines sitting further up before they fell to the ground, causing the debris and dust to further obscure the hole.

"I won't LET YOU!" The Modelcase_"RAILGUN" pointed its gattling railgun and fired upon the hole, causing even more dust and particles to fly into the air. When the smoke finally cleared, the hole was empty. Not a single sign of life remained within it.

The operator gasped for air as the suit landed down onto the ground by the hole, still throwing out stray sparks.

"This should...be enough." He strained to keep on speaking as kept gasping for air. "We've bought you more time...Kizuna. So, expose it all."

* * *

 **Interlude 07**

 **Introduction**

Ability development has prior been shown to be affected by changes in mental state and physical imbalances. Though models have yet to effectively predict effects, quantifiable effects can be noted as a confounding factor in various experiments [1-3]. Notable is the Fracture Experiment that demonstrated the effect of various neurotransmitters and mental illnesses on ability development. Though categories like dissociative identity disorder without a characteristic neurotransmitter effect were not shown to have any demonstrable effect, categories like Schizophrenia or Major Depression which resulted from an overactivity or underactivity of neorutransmitters like dopamine and serotonin demonstrated a formative effect on the abilities developed under the common curriculum [5-8].

Hormonal imbalances much like ones demonstrated in puberty, however, have also demonstrated equally as potent an influence as neurotransmitters [9-12]. Though experiments have shown that this works less with certain hormones especially if they don't cause changes in emotional states, though limitations in those experiments have led to controversy over those results [11, 13-15]. Arguably, thyroid hormones don't lead to direct effect on emotional states, but the deficiency can cause a lethargic state. Growth Hormone and Growth Hormone Releasing Hormones share that indirectness and can be seen as a confounding factor [14, 16, 17]. The most important noted hormones were the ones from the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) and Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Gonadal (HPG) axes—cortisol, LH, FSH, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and inhibin [18-22]. Most notably, the fluctuations in the HPG axes tend to hold heavy influence in the development of mental, neural, and psychometric abilities—believed to be a result of the interplay between those hormones and the core neurotransmitters for pleasure during the pubertal phase of maturation [22, 23].

In order to further model that relationship, a batch of subjects were chosen for this randomized trial and underwent an artificial amplification or destruction of hormone fluctuations through simple and controlled methods like total hysterectomy with bilateral salpingoophrectomy or orchiectomy and the course of ability development and hormone levels were measured.

* * *

 **A/N: At long last, we finally reach the end of the story's second act. It took us a while, but we eventually reached here. Just when you thought the chaos could not spiral any further, it does! Though, I did say last time that we would be hitting another death/rebirth phase, so it's only natural. But before I proceed further with any thoughts, I shall move to review responses.**

 **[Healthcare: You better enjoy that Enemy Blaster, the Powered Suit with the best name. All aside, keep progressing with NT, my man.]**

 **[whwsms: Thanks for the sentiment. While real life, as turbulent as it can get, does need to supersede fanfic writing, I hope that I can still keep you coming back interested every chapter.]**

 **[Guest: As far as an 'accidental pervert moment' between Kizuna and Touma, we've long since past the point where that's a possibility. The moment I got them into any form of a serious mode, that possibility was struck away. Regarding your second desire, I won't have Touma turning into a dragon like in NT22R. However, that doesn't mean the possibility of a dragon appearing has been erased, especially given where the boy is at this moment.]**

 **[Ageha: While I do have my own worries about working with as large a cast as I am, I do feel I am treading lightly enough to make it work. Though, while I do feel that I have crafted things and assigned roles well enough that the story will fit together tightly, that kind of thing really depends on execution first and foremost. I hope that I can live up to your standards.]**

 **With the story progressing to the end of the second act, I guess that there are a few points that I need to reflect on with regards to the chapter and its place in the story overall.**

 **For starters, Ayu and Index. The topic of Touma's amnesia is frequently addressed in the overall story, but with the exception of Misaki, the topic of how it affects other characters tends to be seldom addressed and this is something that is extremely evident with Index, herself. While she accepts his memory loss and accepts who he is now, it's not like the questions about the boy who she spends so much time in won't ever creep in and when an obvious door like Ayu presents itself, those questions will inevitably flood out. Ayu, on the other hand, has much to answer for. She was someone who was saved by Touma at one point (as Biohacker will likely show in the future) and placed him onto a pedestal. On the other hand, she is someone who has been disillusioned for so long that she seeks some form of closure. In the end, these two girls with their strong connections to Kamijou Touma were the two most fit to meet, though I don't think I could put it in words too well for now.**

 **Next comes Kumokawa Maria. When it came down to it, what was the most visible and vulnerable wound to exploit? Throughout the start of the fic, she had been dealing with some level of aversion to Enshuu. Moreover, it's not like she could get over what happened to Kihara Kagun. So, what better card to play than the Kihara card? Granted, there're a lot of conflicting feelings the girl will have over it from now forward. Makes you wonder how things will go for her to the end.**

 **Third: Accelerator and Kuroyoru. As far as these characters are concerned, they're almost working down opposite routes. I once again returned to Will-tan's words to Accelerator at the end of NT6. While Accelerator may be veering two hard on the side of those words, Kuroyoru is one who does the exact opposite. Yet, to some extent, they're both defending the homes they've created through violence. Saving people is not something very Accelerator-like so the moment he tries, something is bound to force him down the path that fits him best. After all, he's not Kamijou Touma and nobody knows that better than Accelerator himself.**

 **Finally, Kamijou Touma. Our boy has honestly been dealing with a lot. But, Kizuna Kanon's assessment of the boy was not wrong. Despite the fact that he had gone through a lot in NT9 and developed into something more honest to himself, that tendency to self-sacrifice is also not something that he can get over just like that (even if just like that refers to a long trauma congo line). Those bits and pieces of old Kamijou Touma will still remain. To the bitter end, that boy is fractured as a person, whether he wants to accept that or not.**

 **With the end of the current act, we bring an end to the non-stop action that has been going on for two and a half chapters. As the characters deal with the aftermath of the events in the mall, things will be brought back to a calm. After all, the next step is not one that they can blindly make. Especially since Kamijou Touma now exists in the hands of the enemy. That new order will truly be a fragile thing.**

 **Of course, I know there's an obvious elephant in the room. What was the reason for that interlude, you may ask? What even was that? Eventually, all shall be made clear. But, for now, all I can say is 'Welcome to Academy City.'**

 **Till the next time we meet, I lay down my pen.**

 **But, what happened to that boy who was wrested from the center stage?**

* * *

 **?**

Kamijou Touma sat up to find his head throbbing. He took a few deep breaths as he clenched his hand onto his head and held it down for a bit as he let that throbbing sensation fade away. As the throbbing sensation finally faded to a point where he could ignore it, he let his breathing slow and raised his head until he could finally see what was around him, but…

"Where am I?"

The world had been dyed a pure white. That wasn't to say that the sun's rays had overwhelmed the world and obscured everything in a blinding white blaze. On the contrary, it was an intensity that reminded him of looking at a blank canvas. It was a gentle and welcoming whiteness that invited itself to be marred by whatever could do so. But, despite it all, the throbbing sensation entered a resurgence as it started to rise in intensity again.

As he stood back up, every single motion with the ground as equally white as the rest of the world around him triggered a ripple. Whenever he placed his hand on the ground. Whenever he lifted it up. Whenever he slid his foot. Each and every motion seemed to create ripples that would interfere with each other and move out until the horizon.

But, no matter how much he thought about it, there was a clear discontinuity in his memories. The last thing he could remember was falling unconscious in front of Kanon. How that led him to this world devoid of all life aside from him, however, was a complete mystery.

Even if it was unlikely that he would ever receive a response, Kamijou Touma had asked the right question. Despite the question he had asked, he never received a single reply. All he could do was clutch at his head as he tried to take the first step, triggering the formation of numerous ripples across the 'floor' that he stood upon.

"What is this…?" The boy muttered as he continued to walk through that white emptiness. It was so unfamiliar—that was the belief that the boy desperately seemed to try to adopt. But, he knew better than that.

After all, that throbbing sensation in his head had never left.

Despite the horizon and despite the ripples, there was truly nothing. Not a hint of human life nor the products it left behind. Not a hint of nature or its inevitable tumult.

"No. No. NO!"

The boy broke into a run as his breathing once again accelerated. He continued to run in search of something. Anything.

This view was unfamiliar? Utter bullshit. Even if it had been covered with another skin and had a few more fancy special effects, the world before him was something he knew far too well.

"Othinus! Index! Kuroyoru!" He shouted the names of everyone he could think of as his feet refused to falter. Flecks of tears streamed from his eyes as he produced further and further ripples throughout that world.

Before long, his legs could no loner bear the pain from muscle fatigue as they gave way, leaving him to fall head first onto the rippling ground. Not even letting a moment go, he flailed his arms around, forcing him off the ground onto all fours.

"Dammit!"

But, no matter how much he tried, his legs would no longer get back up. The hyperventilating boy could no longer move from that spot not because he was unable to.

"It's just like...no, it's even worse..."

His mind had finally caught up with him. The reality of the situation had finally broken through. The impossible reality he seemed to be traversing was the same as the black world that was left behind when Othinus destroyed the world—no, even worse.

The girl who he had used as a signpost back then was no longer here.

There was not a single landmark.

Everything he knew was gone.

He was truly all alone.

All he could do was prostrate himself before that overwhelming reality.

There was nothing left.

"It's alright, Onii-chan."

"W-what?" The boy stuttered as he looked up, trying to detect the source of the unfamiliar young girl's voice that seemed to reverberate throughout the entirety of the space.

"You're like us, but you don't have to hurt anymore."

His gaze of utter hopelessness turned into one of pure confusion as the cryptic words of the young girl sounded as if they originated from everywhere at once. In contrast to the emptiness he had experienced mere moments prior, it now felt almost like the world was threatening to close in around him.

"Just join us and stay with us and we can all no longer hurt together."

It started with the sight of child's hand reaching over through the rippling ground with a splash and placing itself on the back of Kamijou's own right hand. Another hand followed, placing itself onto Kamijou's left. Followed by an arm reaching out and leaving itself on his head.

Realizing what was going on, he bolted back onto his feet, throwing the hands that had gotten onto him off. He had watched enough movies to know that letting things go any further was a bad sign. But, shaking that off didn't alleviate the terror of the situation. The small hands continued to reach up from all over the ground around him, grabbing at his ankles.

The world that had once held an oppressive presence through pure emptiness now seemed to exude a dire oppressiveness through overwhelming numbers as a great amount of hands continued to grab at him and without warning, pull his shoes and feet into the ground with him. Though it splashed and rippled like water, he still found himself feeling like he was standing on solid ground as he spread out his feet, while having them kept to the 'ground', in a misguided attempt to brace himself. Even as he spread them out, he could no longer lift his feet as the overwhelming force of numbers kept his feet from ever rising from the 'ground'.

"LET GO!"

But, his shouts into the ether and his futile physical struggles failed to beget any results as hands reached up and dragged his body further and further down. It was only when he was finally neck deep into the 'ground' that he could finally make out what was standing in front of him.

No, saying that would imply that it was always there. Perhaps it was more accurate to say that it was only at that moment that she had manifested.

She wore a pink sweater, mini-skirt, torn black stockings, and an asymmetrical setting of boots where the left boot reached half-way up her calf as it was designed and the right boot had the upper portion above the laces folded down. However, the two buns that adorned her hair normally were not there. That isn't to say that it was undone. In fact, everything from slightly above the tip of her nose to the top of her head was completely missing as if she had been cleanly sliced through. Moreover, a large hole punched through the center of her chest where her heart had been. Despite it all, she showed signs of vitality as she breathed normally, fiddled with the multiple monitors hanging around her neck, and smiled.

"So, just forget about it all, Touma-oniichan, and stay here. Stay home. With our family. Forever."

The girl smiled as she continued to with a soft voice, different to the one heard earlier, to the boy plunging into the depths of this world.

Perhaps that was the moment where it all ended.

The moment where the hands submerged every last spiky hair on his head.

That was the moment where he had felt something break.

Kamijou Touma had once asked where he was. But, deep within is soul, he attained the answer, even if he wanted to refuse it.

 _Where am I?_

 _Ah...this is Hell._


End file.
